Mercedes Benz S Class Tuning

"Thank you for reading my S Class tuning guide."

The S class or special class, catered for people of taste, who required style and performance in abundance.

For this reason the S Class still ranks as one of the best selling luxury saloon cars around.

We'll look at the best modifications for the S Class range, please read our other in depth articles for more information on each and every modification we mention.

They say knowledge is power and this is certainly true in the world of tuning cars.

The S Class is a good car modification project to execute. The key to S Class tuning is balancing power and reliability you can waste loads of money if you do it wrong.

Top end power should be your overall aim with a nice fat wide peak torque band.

The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.

Tuning modifications.

These mods tuning kits are usually installed by our members, decide how far you wish to go in your tuning project before you begin.

Getting the best modified modifications for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 motor sport mods just won't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

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Stages of Tune

Stage 1 mods: Alloy wheels, Sports exhaust, Lighter flywheel, Remap, Panel air filter, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm).

Stage 2 mods: Fast road cam, Power/Sport clutch, fuel pump upgrades, Ported and polished head, high flow fuel injector.

Stage 3 mods: Engine balancing, Sports gearbox, Competition cam, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves), Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger).

Here are the model ranges and engine options we found for the S Class Mercedes over the last 40 years or so.

• W116 1972-1980 2.8 L I6, 3.5 L V8, 4.5 L V8, 6.8 L V8, 3.0 L  turbodiesel
• W126 1980-1991 2.6 L I6, 2.8 L I6, 3.0 L I6, 3.5 L I6, 3.8 L V8, 4.2 L V8, 5.0 L V8, 5.6 L V8, 3.0 L 5-cylinder turbodiesel, 3.0 L 6-cylinder turbodiesel, 3.5 L 6-cylinder turbodiesel
• W140/C140 1991-1998
  • 2.8 L 145 kW (197 PS; 194 bhp) I6
  • 3.2 L 170 kW (231 PS; 228 bhp) I6
  • 4.2 L 205 kW (279 PS; 275 bhp) V8
  • 5.0 L 240 kW (326 PS; 322 bhp) V8
  • 6.0 L 300 kW (408 PS; 402 bhp) V12 M120 (1991–1993)
  • 6.0 L 290 kW (394 PS; 389 bhp) V12 M120 (1993–1998)
  • 3.0 L Turbodiesel 130 kW (177 PS; 175 bhp) I6
  • 3.5 L Turbodiesel 110 kW (150 PS; 150 bhp) I6

• W20 (1998-2005) Smaller than it's predecessor but boasts more interior space, new gadgets were added but it was slated as unreliable The rare AMG S63 had the 6.3 444bhp engine.
  • 2.8 L 150 kW (204 PS; 201 bhp) V6
  • 3.2 L 165 kW (224 PS; 221 bhp) V6
  • 3.2 L 145 kW (197 PS; 194 bhp) I6 diesel
  • 3.2 L 150 kW (204 PS; 201 bhp) I6 diesel
  • 3.7 L 180 kW (245 PS; 242 bhp) V6
  • 4.0 L 180 kW (250 PS; 250 bhp) V8 diesel
  • 4.0 L 190 kW (260 PS; 260 bhp) V8 diesel
  • 4.3 L 205 kW (279 PS; 275 bhp) V8
  • 5.0 L 225 kW (306 PS; 302 bhp) V8
  • 5.4 L 370 kW (500 PS; 490 bhp) V8
  • 5.8 L 270 kW (367 PS; 362 bhp) V12
  • 5.5 L 370 kW (500 PS; 490 bhp) V12
  • 6.3 L 330 kW (450 PS; 440 bhp) V12
  • 6.0 L 450 kW (612 PS; 604 bhp) V12

Your aim when tuning should be a nice flat torque range. You don't want all the torque to be at the top end unless you are creating a competition car.

In this article we shall give a little insight into the world to the best upgrades for your car, but we'd encourage you to spend some time on the site looking into the details of each type of performance part.One of the most cost effective mechanical modifications you can do to your NASP engine is to fit a fast road cam .

The intake and exhaust durations play a large part in your cars power band, but be careful here, getting this wrong can upset the idle and make the car difficult to drive in traffic. You'd need to follow a camshaft upgrade with other mods and finish with a remap to fully release the power gain.

Don't forget to ramp up the fuelling when you are increasing the power - it makes the car more thirsty.

If you find you have flat spots and surges after your modifications you should check the fuelling and try a higher octane fuel as well. Higher capacity injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

Uprate the fuel pump to cope with the extra fuel requirements of your tuned S Classs uprated injectors.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Contrary to popular belief there is often a small power gain obtained by fitting an induction kit, they only help and are recommended after you boost the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

Maximum power gains come from a full induction kit with a cold air feed on heavily tuned engines, this can be sited within an air box but a panel filter should suffice for most applications. TorqueCars suggest you use a panel air filter as these are easy to clean and maintain and generally perform better than paper ones.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow from the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too wide or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Getting a professionally flowed (ported and polished) head with larger valves can fully maximise your power gains. When you start tuning your S Class you will often find that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our opinion for your S Class are fast road camshaft, remap, induction and exhaust, suspension.

Turbo engines are just crying out to be flashed. You will see impressive power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a remap one of the most cost effective and impressive modifications for your money.Adding forced induction will see large power gains but this is usually too expensive to be cost effective. Superchargers are usually easier to add than a turbo. It is difficult to map fuelling with a turbo as the boost comes on exponentially with revs.

The nice correlating boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them simpler to map. To cope with forced induction you will usually need to decrease the engines compression ratio .

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for people often first priority in your S Class tuning project.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you S Class often enhancing your drive.

We would go to a maximum drop of 26mm - 38 mm on most models. You risk compromising your handling if you go lower than this.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

The benefits of alloy wheels include a lower unsprung weight and better brake cooling via the extra air flow they allow. Pay attention to your choice of tyres (tyres) for your car, a good directional tread pattern tyre can really enhance your cars handling. Please note that although they can look cool on the S Class large alloy wheels will actually decrease your performance. The larger you go the lower your acceleration will be - this to the change in your effective final drive ratio.

For this reason try to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the recommended OEM sizes. In all cases not going larger than 18 inches.

There is a more updated version of this Mercedes S Class Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss S Class options in more detail with our S Class owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased Mercedes tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

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This article is flagged for an update, so please pass on specific tips below that I can include. All articles, and content was written by me, Waynne Smith TorqueCars founder. Some outlines are just too general so I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Mercedes. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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