pogijeffrey

hey guys, my rear tires keep feathering. this is really frustrating. its so noisy on the road. what would be the cause of this.? its gone through allignment, but still does it... i have ove 140,000 miles on the car. have not replaced anything on the rear. i'm looking to replace majority of the bushings on both and the rear, but dont know what parts to order. any suggestions on what to replace would be very helpfull. major components only... i'll be changing my struts and springs to coilovers, so pretty much thats out of the way...

madmdx

alignment, cheap tires, bad offset rims. Take your car to a good alignment place and watch them align it.

pogijeffrey

so u dont think its any of my bushings? maybe they are just worn out. because i do hear a slight rattle noise in the rear when i hit a bump. so u think its just a bad allignment job.?

pogijeffrey

bad offset rims? really?

Norwichdelta06

is it true only certain shops can allign a mercedes?

FrankW

sounds like you got too much toe-in in the rear. have the bushing checked out.

on a w203 the only thing you can actually "align" is the toe angle up front. any other adjustment require camber/castor bolts or camber kits/arms, so when you have problem with alignment it's most likely caused by worn out bushings. shops can loosen the bolt and bang around a little bit, but it's not going to make much of the difference since they don't allow much movement at all.

Glyn M Ruck

https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...light=rear+toe

FrankW

i must say that the drawing in that pdf sucks big time! cannot for the life of me tell what is going on in there.

Glyn M Ruck

You have a cam bolt at 60a the pulls the "toe" rod backwards & forwards.

Glyn M Ruck

Midnight Koop

go to an alignment shop that can give you the specs of camber, caster and toe.

at least you can keep track of whats going on. I had feathering problems with a bad alignment before and it was because of toe (i think).

since then i got camber bolts (front) and rear camber kit... but with the width of my tires/wheels... i can't go less than about negative ~2.7 camber in the rear. it helps with handling, but isn't the best for tire wear.

pogijeffrey

thanks guys... what i would like to do is replace some worn out bushings. i hear a rattling noise on the left side. i just dont know what the part is called. i dont even know how to explain where the part is on the car

Glyn M Ruck

Sort out worn bushings before doing alignment.

pogijeffrey

What bushings should I replace glyn? I just don't know what parts to order.

Glyn M Ruck

You need to check all of them for cracks. Camber bushes are usually first to go on rear.

madmdx

Hi, Im a year late to this, sadly, too busy to check the site except when I have a new problem lol. Anyway let me explain how the alignement goes from the car I am a technician for a competitor luxury car dealership btw. And I've recently done the alignement and some rear suspension work on my dads 02 c320, which is pretty much the same as your 05.
So Here we go:

General info: you CAN NEVER ALIGN a vehicle with ANY broken suspension component (shock, spring, tie rod, bushing, ball joint, ANYTHING)

The rear: Ill start in the back because this is THE RIGHT WAY to do an alignement. IF your alignement in the rear is BAD, then no matter how straight your front wheel alignement will be, the car will NOT drive straight. In the rear the first thing a mecanic will notice is WAY TOO MANY BUSHINGS! Have your mecanic check ALL these bushings (which commonly tear and are EXTREMELY annoying and difficult to diagnose).
Next you will notice the only adjustable arm in the rear: the TOE arm. This is the arm that hangs from the subframe to the SIDE of the knuckle assembly, at the subframe end it is a small bushing, and the alignement bolt/washer/nut, and at the knuckle(wheel side) end there is a little ball joint.
THIS BALL JOINT IS LIKELY LOOSE! I had such a hard time finding this thing was loose, the car literally felt like it was on ice 100% of the time and I could not find out why. Eventually, I got my gigantic pry bar and my channel lock pliers and discovered this SOB was loose. Cost around 40-80$ from the auto parts, I suggest Lemforder(sp?) or OEM MB only. Dont put ****ty ball joints on your cars please, I have seen horrible things happen to cars with poor quality replacement ball joints.
Anyway This part comes as the complete arm/bushing/ball joint/washer/nut if you buy Lemforder (find a german autoparts specialist)
**this part is a massive pain in the *** to change if the adjustment bolt is stuck, like mine was. You will need to cut it with a die grinder,hacksaw, whatever you can find. Do not attempt if you're not comfortable with cutting tools **
Ok so after you fixed all the garbage suspension in the back, you can now align the rear! One simple adjustment, the rear toe, which is that part i wrote a whole paragraph for ^
**MB ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WITH THE SPECIAL TOOL REQUIRED TO MESURE THE RIDE HEIGHT OF THE CAR.**
there may be other shops, but I have NEVER seen one When I did my adjustment, I used a generic value for the toe, which works but is not as accurate as the MB value would be, which actually mesures the ride height of your car and adjusts the value depending on that, so for BEST alignement, go to MB To adjust rear camber for lowered cars: aftermarket parts, or SPECIALISED alignement places which can do it with hub spacers. Very rare to find shops that do this.

The front: From the factory, as most cars you only have a truly adjustable TOE in the front, which means this is the adjustment which decides if the wheels point inwards / \ like that, straight | | like that, or outwards \ / like that. And everywhere in between. In most cases, you wont need to touch caster/camber adjustments and if you do, then you may have some damaged suspension components which are causing those adjustments to be bad (loose ball joints, bushings, ACCIDENTS that bent control arms/shocks etc)
Any GOOD alignement place can align the front toe BUT THE REAR MUST BE DONE FIRST. It is not unique to MB, all cars use the same tie-rod adjustment style. Having a bad toe in the front will QUICKLY destroy your tires (well any bad adjustment really). I dont think you need the special tool, but MB will once again give a more precise adjustment with that ride height adjustment.

Anyway thats all I can say on the alignement and why your tires are feathered. Torn bushings, loose ball joints, lowered cars, bad alignements.
Also, CHEAP tires will wear bad as well (chinese tires, random brands) So good luck with that, probably solved by now anyway