Car Owner Does A DIY Engine Rebuild After The Dealer Quoted $57,000

At the beginning of the year, there was a story going around about an unlucky Mercedes-Benz R63 AMG owner who was quoted $57,000 to have the engine rebuilt after a head bolt failure. But he decided to do all the work on his own and it’s a good thing he did. Because Popular Mechanics reported that after eight months of work, the car is back together and running. And he has an extra $50,000 in his bank account.

Back in September of 2016 a Grassroots Motorsports forum member, mazdeuce, was faced with the ungodly estimate from his local Mercedes dealership after the engine failed at 106,000 miles. But instead of forking over the sky-high dollar amount he decided to buy a lift and do it himself. Because who doesn’t love saving money AND getting to turn some wrenches. Plus it gave him a reason to buy a lift.

With the lift in his garage and eight months of disassembly, resurfacing and rebuilding the car is back in action. And thankfully, mazdeuce documented the process from start to finish, on a 98-page forum thread, which is shown in the video above. The ordeal culminated in the first-start video, found 86 pages into the thread. Stay tuned to see how much he saved by doing the job himself!