- What happens when you take a feisty AMG Tiger
and you throw it into love cage
with a luxurious mane- having Maybach lion?
Well, after 93-day gestation period,
(explosion)
you get a liger,
a smoke show liger named Brabus,
and specifically you get a Brabus Rocket 900.
(engine revving)
So today we're going to take a look
at the science behind this car's V12 engine
and how it's able to propel this 5,600 pound machine
up to 60 miles an hour in less than four seconds,
how its intelligent suspension system
can see what's coming before you do,
and how the Rocket 900 compares
to the car it shares its DNA with,
the Mercedes Maybach S650.
You can sip champagne in the back of this thing
while doing 220 froggin miles per hour.
Boy, oh boy, let's get into it.
(chill trap beat)
Well, all right, all right, all right.
Thanks to Raycon
for sponsoring this episode of "Bumper 2 Bumper".
I've been using Raycon earbuds
long before anybody paid us to use them.
I wasn't trying to make a statement.
I just liked them.
I like popping in my Everyday E25 earbuds
while I'm driving through the ambiguous desert
during magic hour,
listening to freeform jazz and whale sounds.
It guides my escape from being a celebrity.
The Everyday E25,
they gave me six hours of playtime.
They sound just as good as it was other premium earbuds
but at half the price.
They come on a lot of cool colors too.
I like colors.
(car door closes)
It'd be real cool if you guys could head over
to buyraycon.com/bumper,
get you a nice set of high quality earbuds
like the Everyday E25.
Let them know we sent you.
(bell dings)
(Jeremiah laughing)
Now AMG makes some of the coolest, most powerful Benzes,
and Maybach is known for its extreme luxury and comfort.
A Brabus is a whole 'nother beast
that takes both of them to an extreme.
So to understand exactly what Brabus does
to make these land rockets so fast
we first have to get to know the car it's based off of.
The Mercedes Maybach S650,
which for convenience sake we'll just call the S650,
is Maybach's top tier model.
Now the S650, it's a ripper,
and a lot of that credit goes to the AMG M279,
an incredible V12 bi-turbo engine.
It's been around since 2002,
that's 18 years.
Now Mercedes has kept this engine simple
by using a single overhead cam setup
and a three valve design.
Now if we were to compare this with another V12 engine,
like the one in the LaFerrari,
that has a similar size and set up
but it uses a dual overhead cam system
which doubles the amount of cam shafts
and also adds weight and size
and it also makes timing a little bit more difficult.
Now the S650's engine also uses something
called multi spark ignition
where the spark plug fires five times
for every cylinder cycle.
Now when a spark goes off inside the cylinder at low RPMs
there's a risk of the mixture being too lean,
which means that there's more air than fuel
in your air/fuel mixture.
And because of that
one spark isn't enough to burn that mixture
before it gets pushed out during the exhaust stroke,
and that results in poor efficiency.
So the AMG M279 fires off five times per cycle
which creates a larger flame kernel,
which is the little burst of flames that happen
at the tip of the spark plug.
And that ensures that all of the fuel gets burned completely
before the exhaust valve opens.
Now this results in better consistency and efficiency
in each of those 12 cylinders.
Okay, so all that's cool, Jerry Berry,
but I came to learn about Brabus,
you frog leg loving Tom DeLonge lookalike
with all the proportions of Woody from "Toy Story"
and eyebrows that bounced around,
so what does Brabus even do?
Brabus figured out a way
to make a mind-blowing 900 horsepower
and 1,160 foot pounds of torque out of that AMG V12.
That's a power increase of 279 horsepower
and 368 foot pounds of twist.
So the only question I have is how'd they do it?
So the first thing that Brabus does to the engine
is they strip it down to the studs,
like completely down to the studs.
The only part of the engine
that sticks around from the Mercedes factory
is the aluminum block,
and even that gets a lot of changes done to it.
Now Brabus takes the block
and increases the displacement
from 6.3 liters up from six liters,
by boring out each cylinder,
shaving off layers of metal inside
each of those little, little compartments of combustion.
That's what I'm calling a cylinder now,
compartment of combustion.
And when you bore out any cylinder,
the machine creates a fine cross hatched imperfection
on the surface of the bore.
And these are essential
because it helps a cylinder wall retain oil
to assist with the piston ring lubrication.
Now theoretically,
the idea is for there to be a very thin layer of oil
between the edge of the piston rings and the cylinder wall,
and what Brabus does is they cut down the cylinder wall
to expose a specifically calibrated amount
of silicon crystals on the wall,
allowing for the optimal amount of oil
to stay in between the silicon and the aluminum on the wall
for the absolute best performance possible.
And Brabus actually uses a high powered microscope
to inspect each cylinder wall
to make sure that it's been cross hatched
to the right specification from their factory.
Pretty freaking cool, man.
Now along with the increase in volume,
Brabus also manufacturers their on crankshaft for the engine
that provides a longer stroke
for the connecting rods inside each of those cylinders.
And when you have a longer stroke
you make more space for that air/fuel mixture,
which makes a bigger combustion.
And this increase in strokage
has to be paired with a brand new set
of precision Brabus internals.
And boy, oh boy, do I mean precision.
Brabus manufacturers all new internals for the V12 engine,
replacing the steel connecting rods
with forged aluminum rods.
And not only that,
they replaced the Mercedes pistons with milled ones,
which are cut down to save some weight.
Brabus also uses their own lighter weight valves,
their camshafts, their springs, and injectors,
all of which are specifically made to accommodate
the increase in displacement and heat and power.
Now the process of replacing stock internals
isn't special in its own right,
but the process that Brabus uses
for assembling the internals in this engine
is really, really cool.
So first once all 12 of sets of connecting rods
and piston heads have been manufactured,
Brabus weighs all of those pieces individually
down to a 10th of a gram.
Then Brabus pairs up a connecting rod to a piston
and they weigh them to make sure
that they have the exact same mass
as every other connecting rod/piston assembly,
which ensures a truly perfect engine balance
in each of the two banks of six cylinders.
Brabus then reassembles the engine by hand
because hey, they're greasy knuck boys too over there.
But that is just the engine.
But don't forget we've got two turbos
that need to get bolted back onto this bad boy.
Now Brabus replaces
the AMG tuned turbochargers from the M279 engine
with their own
which increases the size of the compressor units
and also increase the size of the turbines.
Which all that means
is it forces even more air into the engine.
Now with all of this added pressure,
and you got your added air
and you got your added displacement.
there is a lot more heat being generated in the engine bay
and that needs to be managed.
Brabus created their own
custom carbon fiber air intake molecule
that works in tandem with a new front grill,
and this directs more air to the turbos more efficiently
and it also helps direct more air into the cooling system.
Brabus actually lines the entire outside
and bottom of the air intake module with gold, baby,
so that it dissipates the most heat possible,
much like another insane engineer's
wet dream of a supercar, the McLaren F1.
And we talked about that
in a couple of episodes back of "B2B".
You should go watch it.
And now Brabus uses their own
lightweight high strength manifolds,
and in addition to the turbos
and the forged and milled internals,
it produces a super smooth, super fast
zero to 60 time of 3.7 seconds
and a top speed of 220 miles per hour.
(engine revving)
You already knew why they called it a 900.
Now you know why they called it a rocket.
And the crazy thing is
the engineers over at Brabus
actually limited the power output.
Now rumor has it
that they had already come up with the 900 namesake
and it was just too much of a pain in the butt to change it.
So engineers were like,
"Alright, guess we've got to hit 900 horsepower.
"So let's just tune this thing down."
Engineering mysteries on "B2B". (humming)
Now the original transmission and drive train,
suspension and brake system
are all carried over from the S650
and remained unchanged on the Rocket 900,
which is another testament
to the engineers over at Mercedes.
These pieces are under a lot more stress than usual
and they hold up well enough to cope
with a huge bump in power and speed.
The only thing that Brabus has to tune
is something called magic body control,
and that uses a radar system
to predictively adjust the suspension setup
for bumps in the road that the car is about to run over,
rather than adjusting as the car runs over them.
Predict what my butt is about to feel, car.
Now this magic body control can even lean inward on a turn
by up to 2.65 degrees to compensate for body roll
to make sure that the car stays flat through a bendy corner.
Now all of this is controlled by a system
that monitors road surface changes,
your throttle input, your breaking input,
and steering input to constantly adjust
the car's pitch, lean, and ride height.
It takes Brabus up to eight weeks
just to tune the engine of the Rocket 900,
and this doesn't even include the rest the vehicle's bits
like the bodywork or the interior.
Some Brabus tuned cars
can take over a year just to complete.
It just depends on what the customer wants in their car.
And customers of Brabus can basically
pick and choose any material, stitch patterns,
colors, fits, and finishes for the entire car
down to the most minute level.
This is also why this car can cost
over half a million dollars.
Heck, a set of tires for this car costs over 20 grand!
Now progress defines their craftsmanship
by passion over profit,
and the rocket 900 is a perfect example of that mindset.
If you want to learn more
about the people that make other cars that Brabus makes,
check out this episode of "Up To Speed".
You want to know more about internals
and forged materials and how they do,
how forged parts are better than cast parts or milled parts,
go check out this episode of the Supra.
Guys, we got freaking shows almost every day here at Donut.
So follow us, like, hit Subscribe, that helps us out a ton.
Follow me on Instagram @jeremiahburton.
Follow us on Donut @donutmedia.
I'll see you next week, bye for now.
(synthwave music)