Vivid

Yesterday I changed a flat in my wifes 240. I put on the small pizza cutter spare and then made the biggest mistake ever... I used the regular wheel bolts. MB gives you shorter bolts for the spare. I seemed to have looked over that while laughing at the white gloves they give you to change the tire.

This mistake will cost me about 700 bucks tomorrow. The bolt holes in the wheel hub are all stripped. Completly. I have only 3 bolts holding that wheel on right now. They are on but if I pull them out, forget about it....

A new hub for a 4matic is about 200 bucks. I figure book time for labor will be about 500 bucks... I was going to do this myself but it is 13 degrees outside and not much warmer in my garage. If it were warm, I would do this in a heart beat. I hate giving into Satan (dealership).

Learn from my mistake and look for the small bolts when you put on the spare.

Thank you.

EV0LVE

thanks for hte heads up, I almost made the same mistake, I didn't even know I saved myself a few hundred bucks.

greetings to all

Cappa26

Something worse happend to me, just a tip of advice, a company named Spy Engineering placed a new set of replica mono vi's on my car, their located in San Diego, California. When they placed the new set of rims, they had to pick out a new set of bolts. The bolts they picked out had different pitches, as a result, my front 2 wheel hubcenters were stripped... costed me alot of money. I called the owner and was hoping he was man enough to issue a check or even 50% of the repair cost, he then became aggressive and started yelling "IM NOT GOING TO PAY FOR SOMETHING I DIDNT DO, BRING ME TO COURT, ILL TAKE YOU TO COURT AND I WILL WIN" funny thing is I tried, i sent a court notice and he ignored the notice, I even hired sheriff to deliver the mail to me, the sheriff had no luck, no one would answer the door. I had the service manager at Penske motorcars in West Covina and a aftermarket wheel company that was established before that owner even hit puberty, to vouch that the pitch size was different.

Sorry for hijacking your thread and for the partial ranting

[iNTx]

I have the 01 C320 SPort and there is no shorter bolt unlike my 01 E320 and also 02 E200 Kompressor, I really wonder whether it comes like that.

yeuchau

it depends on ur spare tire
if ur spare is the same as regular wheel, then you don't need shorter bolts

bloodyhands

thnx for the warning,i wouldve never realize that.

SeanSBA

my car never came with shorter bolts for the spare

Vivid

My car is at Satans garage right now. I hope to get it back in a few hours. I still can't believe I did this.

Last night I was also going to retap the threads on the hub. My wife's safety is worth much more than that so I will gladly pay the 700 or so dollars...

everycredit

I have a regular-sized spare in my C320. The tire is a short-term tire (miniscule tread life), but same size. Same bolts can be used.

Buellwinkle

Personally I would never do that but my daughter called AAA and they did and they paid for it, $327 but she only went 2' before the wheel seized. MB is the only manufacturer that I know of to do this, Audi which uses the same wheel dimensions and offset to the C don't do this. What had to be done is replace the 3 damaged springs, tap the threads in the hub and new lug nuts. If the hub is damaged beyond repair, it can easily double the price to fix. I've heard of some people spend as much as $1,200 for repairs.

Sauceboy01

The Worst thing of all??

I was at the track a couple of weeks ago and my front tire burst due to a screw on the track.

Hey no worries i'll just put the spare on... Little did i know that the spare on 2005 C230 Sport Sedan's dont fit on the front brakes... ah crap! Luckily enough i had a spare spacer in my tool box! yep the 5mm spacer saved my ***!!!

So what is with this anyway? I understand that our brake calipers are huge up front but cummon MB! What do i do if i need to put the spare on the front wheels??

JoeVulture

I actually made this mistake last year on Christmas Day. Seems that when I bought my C240 (used), it didn't have the shorter bolts.

I drove over 100 miles with the longer bolts (from outside of Yosemete back home), and when I got the car to the dealership the next day (for a new rim), they informed me that I luckily had not done any damage by using the longer bolts. At least I hope that they're right on that, I'd really hate to find out they're wrong the next time my front right tire goes flat.

As part of my rim replacement cost, they were kind enough to give me a set of the shorter bolts, and even a new pair of gloves (the car only came with one when I bought it).

-- Joe

Vivid

I was going to retap the hub last night. I said forget it. Not worth it if the threads give out and the wheel comes off at 75 mph. It is what it is. Expensive mistake. I'm not going to worry about it.

e1000

seriously? the donut dosen't fit over the front calipers? that's crazy.

coin

That's insane. Is it something they don't know ?

Buellwinkle

It's a problem in the rear only because the parking brake is behind the hub so long bolts hit the springs and shoes and cause not only damage to it but damage to the tip of the bolt so you end up messing up the hub extracting the bolt to remove the wheel. It's not a good idea to use them in the front but not as risky.

As for the spare not fitting in the front of the '05 SS, that would be bad if they made a car that had a spare only for the rear. Did you ask the dealer about it? I've only had 2 flats between my C230 and SLK230 and both were in the rear and both were the annoying deflated spare.

b3d_sage

Come on, if you're smart enough to earn the money to buy a Benz surely you can figure out how to solve getting a flat in the front...











































figure it out yet? Well, if not: put the spare on a rear wheel and move the good rear to the front.

doramon1313

[QUOTE=b3d_sage;1873381]Come on, if you're smart enough to earn the money to buy a Benz surely you can figure out how to solve getting a flat in the front...


figure it out yet? Well, if not: put the spare on a rear wheel and move the good rear to the front.[/QUOTE]



Yah genius, the offsets are sometimes different and the rear won't clear the front anyways....Not even going to mention staggered setups...what to make another wise guy comment?

Jakarta Expat

WTF, I thought this was apost for saving money on Vivid Video the **** Kings.

b3d_sage

ehh.... if you're using stock wheels, shouldn't they all be the same?

frox11

My front tire blew up one night and u know what I did, I read the manual to change the tire.

Don't people read manuals anymore?

Vivid

Good for you because I'm willing to bet you dont know how to put air in a tire either.

I've changed tires on BMW, Mitsubishi, Dodge, among others. Never looked at the manual to change a tire. Always been an easy painless job.

Not the case here. MB has to make it hard. I've been amazed at the amount of people that this has happened to when searching the net.

b3d_sage

Lucky for me, the factory included a full spare on my car. Otherwise, I'm sure the same thing would have happened.

frox11

Quite the contrary, I monitor my car tires pressures regularly and inflate them to the recommmended pressure(28/32) + 1 PSI using my bicycle pump(any schrader pump will work) + digital gauge. My road bike tires pressure is at 110 PSI and my mountain bike at 70-80 PSI. So I would not bet if I were you

There is a section in the manual on tire changing and it stated to use the appropriate bolts for the spares.

When I saw a different sets of bolts with the spare, I know there was something different about this car.