lol no prob. I have a mercedes as well and they have these damn bolts everywhere.
I refuse to work on Mercedes.
fenixgoon did you ever fine the part number you were looking for.
not yet but i did pick up some panel clip pullers from harbor freight. hoping that those can save me some effort. we’ll find out in ~2 weeks!
Harbor tools are a good starting point. Lots of them last but they are good for trial tools and if they did a good job I usually end up getting a better version of them. The body panel tools have worked well for me.
yeah the general rule of HF is “if it moves, don’t buy it. if it doesn’t, you’re probably ok.” once bought a dremel from them. i was better off burning a $10 bill. sockets seem decent though.
update: instead of a nice snazzy JHM exhaust, i went the quick and dirty route - cut out the resonators. adds a good bit of bark sound on acceleration (not much on startup) and costs significantly less ($85 at my local shop).
for maximizing the engine, JHM would absolutely be the way to go - and I want to support those guys for all the work they do with our cars. But in this case, it was impossible to say no given the cost difference.
Almost settled in my new house - need to clear the garage so I can do the water pump, t-stat, intake spacers, accessory belt pulley, and oil pan gasket.
honestly, one of the big changes in sound is fitting an X pipe where the resonators are, replace the cans in the back with magnaflow and you’re about 80% of the way to a JHM for about $3-500 depending on the shop. Of course you’re still using the crazy bends and crimps of the stock system but you’ll get a dramatic improvement in sound over stock.
The huge pro’s to the JHM is the fit&finish (fit exactly as OEM with no adjustments to hangers to get the tips centered in the rear), slight performance bump from much better tubing, looks sexy AF with all that shiny SS, sound, and then sound and finally, the sound. You definitely pay a premium for all that.
You have a lot of other things that need to be done. Adding the sound for less than 100 bucks is a good way to go. Down the road you can always step the exhaust up if you want to. The big jump is from the JHM ECU flash.
You go from just over 2" stock to 2.75" with the JHM exhaust that alone is going to help wake the car up. As you mentioned add in the X pipe that helps pull the air into the motor and the over all no crimps or shitty bends. You can see the cars jump in acceleration in the mph increase in the 1/4 mile times. Its a good upper rpm jump.
update:
bumper off. all-black honeycomb grille replacing stock grille. crash beam off, painted black. oil drained.
next up:
oil pan gasket change
coolant drain, radiator pull
Just pull the front core support. It takes about 10 min more and it gives you WAY more room. Its overall less hassle than pulling out the rad. The front core support comes off with the rad. Gives you way more access to almost everything. ITs a good open free way to work on the car. Your going to swing the AC rad out of the way anyways its all the same thing. Just the removal of the core support gives more room and access.
anything i should be looking for in the bentley manual? a quick search showed some stuff (shine’s thread is pretty great), but nothing as detailed as a manual. so far my experience has been that this car is not necessarily intuitive in terms of where to look for bolts and things ;D
I’m not sure of the step your at but its very very straight forward and again its easier and less steps than pulling the rad out.
About the biggest thing you might have issues with is just unplugging the wireharness and making sure you pull out the hood cable. Both of those are incredibly easy if you just take your time. No real complications with doing that.
that feeling when the “lower left coolant hose” turns out to be a refrigerant line… :’( :’( :-[ :-[
time to wait it out and try again. feel free to laugh at my misfortune in the meantime 
got the hood cable no problem.
could you go into a little more detail on the wiring harness? i disconnected the radiator fans but there’s still a line that runs from the passenger side to the radiator fan on the driver’s side (i’m guessing this is the harness line).
also, having trouble moving the PS line out of the way. i got it rotated 180degrees (pointed toward driver’s side) but i don’t get how it’s possible to get the line through that little window in the core support, unless i’m missing something.
OMG are you serious. What a tough break. Make sure to tape off the lines and do what you can to not let any condensation get in.
The one electronic line you should be able to follow that back to the body side and there is a plug. Depending on the year you can also unplug all of that one the rad side.
As for the power steering. you can do two things.
1 if you get the plug on the one side you can swing the core support out to the one side leaving the power steering cooler hooked up.
2 or you can follow the hard line back to the soft lines and remove the one time clip and pull the lines from the PS cooler. After you do that just plug the two lines and if you want you can swing the core support back to the side where the electronic line is.
Let me know if this made sense.
that’s perfect. thanks justincredible! certainly living up to your name 
I try. let me know how it works out. If I can help more I’m happy to.
and the core is off!
after disconnecting the radiator fan connections, you can remove the driver’s side line - it’s only held on by some plastic clips. just pull carefully. this lets you swing the core out towards the driver’s side.
i ended up undoing the powersteering lines as well, so my core is totally off. now for the real work to begin!
Great work. Now compare that to leaving the core still on and you can see how much time you saved and just how much more room you will have.
Once you know how to pull it off its a breeze.
If you can. Consider posting a few pix of the core and the connections to help the guys in the future.
http://audirevolution.net/upload-media
You can load them directly to the site and when you do it gives you a personal folder.