Back in January, we told you about an unfortunate Mercedes-Benz R63 AMG owner who, instead of paying $57,000 to have the engine rebuilt after a head-bolt failure, decided to do all the work on his own. We?re happy to report that after eight months of work, the owner has finally put the car back together.
It was back in September of 2016 that Grassroots Motorsports forum member mazdeuce was faced with the massive repair estimate from his local Mercedes dealership after the engine failed at 106,000 miles. Instead of forking over the insane dollar amount to fix his precious unicorn from 2007?one of a couple hundred units built only that year?mazdeuce decided to buy a lift and do it himself.

What followed was eight months of disassembly, resurfacing, and rebuilding. Fortunately for us, mazdeuce documented the entire process, start to finish, on a 103-page forum thread, which you can see here. The ordeal culminated in this first-start video, found 86 pages into the thread.
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That was almost three weeks ago. Since then, mazdeuce reports finding a small oil leak, but other than that, it’s as good as new. A DIY for the ages. We’ve asked mazdeuce for the total cost of his rebuild, and will update here when we know how much he saved on the original $57,000 price tag.
This story originally appeared on Road ...