As you may have noticed, stories have been a little light the past week or so, primarily due to some hectic behind-the-scenes work on the website.  There's been a number of tips that we've received that the time to publish, so if you're one of the several who've taken the time to email us, thank you, we apologize for being a bit behind schedule, but we're doing our best to make up all that we've missed.

First up we have a new tuning package from Renntech, one which takes the already impressive Mercedes SLR McLaren 722 Edition and boosts its output to a figure more befitting of its moniker:  722 horsepower. 

To arrive at the impressive figure, Renntech engineers began with the 650 horsepower limited edition supercar and quickly began analyzing the vehicle's intercooler.  After the stock intercooler pump was replaced with a Renntech-specific pump and a new dedicated radiator was installed, intake temperatures dropped an average of 10 degrees Celsius across the operating range and the time it took for the engine temp after a dyno run was drastically reduced.  This improved cooling then allowed Renntech to focus on the supercharger, pulley kit and improved software tuning, the end result being a 722 horsepower SLR sure to be at the top of every oil baron's wish list this holiday season.

To learn more, keep scrolling to see a few additional photos of the Renntech SLR 722 Edition, followed by the press release detailing the tuning package.

And to Ferdinand and Jo: thanks for the tips my friends; we sincerely appreciate them.







OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE


HERE IN FLORIDA, 722 MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS

Lake Park, FL, 10 April 2007 - At the 1955 Mille Miglia,
at 7:22am, British racing drivers Stirling Moss and
Denis Jenkinson set out on what was to be a historic
run. Moss' Mercedes-Benz 300SLR, though visually
similar to the road-going 300SL gull wing car, was
based heavily on Mercedes' W196 Grand Prix car.
Despite this, the Italian teams were the heavy
favorites to win, with a strong showing expected from
the Porsche 550 team. The SLR, wearing the number
722 (indicating the 7:22 start time) won the race,
and turned Stirling Moss into a legend.

Some 50 years later, very little seemed to have
changed. Mercedes McLaren's 626hp SLR had barely
seen the light of day before Ferrari's Enzo stole the
headlines. To make matters worse, Porsche's
flyweight Carrera GT arrived with the Bugatti Veyron
hot on its heels. All of a sudden, the SLR was washed
out in a wave of new supercar headlines.

Mercedes decided the best response to this dilemma
would be to invoke the spirit of Moss and the original
Mille Miglia number 722, and released, in the summer
of 2007, a special edition Mercedes-McLaren SLR 722
with 650hp.

For most people, six-fifty is probably enough says
RENNtech's Hartmut Feyhl, but you see that 722 on
the car and you start to want seven-hundred and
twenty-two horsepower.

Such comments might be easily dismissed but not
when they come from Feyhl. No stranger to high-
performance, Feyhl followed up his 12 year run at
AMG by forming RENNtech a tuning house generally
regarded as the nation's foremost authority on
Mercedes-Benz performance.

The RENNtech crew began with a comprehensive
review of the SLR's stock components, when attention
quickly focused on the car's intercooler. The stock
intercooler wasn't doing the job, Feyhl explains, it
needed an upgrade.

That upgrade took the form of a virtual redesign of
the SLR's intercoolers. The stock intercooler pump
was replaced with a RENNtech-specific pump with
almost double the capacity of outgoing unit. A
dedicated radiator was installed, and the new pieces
were integrated into the engine bay almost invisibly.
As Feyhl points out, It looks like it s supposed to be
there.

The new intercooler dropped intake temperatures an
average of 10 degrees Celsius across the operating
range, and the time it took to get the engine's
temperatures back to normal after a dyno run was
greatly reduced. We used to have to wait almost 2
minutes between dyno runs to the get the
temperatures back down, even with big fans blowing,
says Feyhl. Now it takes about 20 seconds.

The improved cooling meant that RENNtech could shift
their attention to the supercharger and pulley a
RENNtech pulley kit, enhanced by RENNtech's own SLR
specific software tuning, increased boost to the SLR's
5.5 liter V8 and produced an astonishing (albeit,
coincidental) result: 722hp which might mean a lot
more to McLaren customers than 7:22am.

Copyright © 2007, Renntech