mominnz

I bought an approved used Mercedes Benz E250 cdi coupe costing me 33000 pounds.
The experience has been terrible as there was vibration in the steering.
Mercedes dealers never accepted that there was any fault.

After investigating i found that the rims were bent.
I got one changed and its better now.

I have 19 inch alloys from AMG and they just dont bend until a severe pot hole hits.

As for cracked rims, my tyres keep on loosing pressure as well. Maybe a cracked rim.

_timothy

mb service is the worst ive ever experienced. GM has been the best.

mominnz

But i dont understand, Mercedes Benz is the forefront of innovation and the cars are simply top quality. But issues with Mercedes are hard to diagnose and its expensive,

In my case the dealers 20 + year experiences technician said that its due to large alloys.
I dont believe that because Mercedes would not just sell a car with steering vibration. They test cars extensively which i have seen, I think its mainly the dealers which are useless.

chyno

Well the 4th one craked last week and I spent another 1700 $ cad for another wheel ... If I break another one I'm gonna hand keys over ..:/

Richard_AMG

Hi I was just wondering how you got on with this? I have just discovered that one of my rear 19" AMG alloys has a crack in the same place and Merc are not covering under warranty, just had to buy a new alloy at nearly £700 !!!!

Critter

Gentlemen, these rim cracks are a safety issue and should be covered by MB as such. If the manufacturer (MB) places these rims on their cars then they have to warrant them. A bent rim is different whereas the wheel has contacted say a pot hole or curb for instances and is the owners fault. Cracking of a rim means either the material is too hard or there is physically not enough material or engineering TO SUPPORT THE VEHICLE. What will MB do when a family is driving down the road and the car loses a rear wheel at speed on a curve and rolls the car over into a ditch, just hope that never comes but it is a viable outcome. Even to the fact of a tire losing air as a result of cracking is a safety issue causing the driver to possibly lose control.
Aftermarket rims are a different story but OEM should not crack, period.
Had a set of Konig "unknown" rims mounted on a 2000Tiburon, which hit a 5 inch raised square manhole that had the asphalt ground away around it . It was raining and 5 AM in the morn and the road crew had left, no markings or signs nothing. After hitting this cover at 50mph both front and back rims were flat spotted only on the outer rim, easily seen with your eye, the tires had punctures where the rubber was pinched to the rim, the rims did not crack, although the impact was so severe that the radio shut off. Have pictures but cannot get them to load, city paid 1200 for those two rims and tires. OEM Rims should not crack.

brendonwallace

Hi
I have experienced three cracked alloys in fours months... all different wheels.. 2 front and one back. I am not aware of any hitting anything other than normal road bumps and conditions. I spoke with the service manager about this who claimed it was very unusual but all the cracks must have happened due to the road surface not the wheel at fault. He then went on to say this wheels are designed to do 1 million miles on a track. However, are roads are not race tracks and bumps in the roads are impossible to avoid. I can understand the odd crater pot hole causing a real problem, but not what I would call everyday normal driving conditions. However Mercedes still refused to accept any fault with the wheels. I have retained all three alloys as I don't intend to let this go. After all the wheel has to be fit for purpose and that is driving on a everyday road... and if slight bumps in the roads are causing these cracks then I would deem them not fit for purpose. Each time it has cost me over £600 per wheel. when the back one went the tyre went flat and mangled the tyre... I then needed to replace both rears so they weren't different tred depths....so I was told.
I intend to write to merc officially about this and was very interested to come across this forum when I googled the problem. It is clear the problem is very common, although Mercedes are telling me its very rare and they haven't heard of it happening before.
I have driven Porsche, Ferrari, Audi all in the last ten years and never experienced a single alloy cracking. It strikes me they are not made strong enough to take normal road conditions and I intend to challenge Merc on this through the courts if necessary.

ZephyrAMG

This is terrible. Almost all C63 allocations were given with 19" Multispokes as standard in Europe. Are all these wheels failing? Are the ones stamped "made in Germany" also failing?

_timothy

Funny how its always normal or not mb's fault. Total mfers

yx-Daniel

I'm also registred on several German Mercedes boards. I didn't find
one person here in Europe with cracking 19" AMG wheels on a C63.

btw. Most of our roads in Germany aren't better than yours ...

Best regards, Daniel

ZephyrAMG

If you Consider the fact that Mercedes-Benz had made multi spoke wheels for a lot of their cars over the years why is it just this 19 inch wheel for the C 63 AMG? Look at the SLS AMG look at the CLK AMG they have many different kinds of multi spoke wheels available for their cars before, have we had any damage or breakage in the past?

olszowa12

I bent my 19" multispokes a few times but no cracks.
And the polish roads are the worst.

Diabolis

AFAIK those are all forged wheels, as are the ones for the C63 BS. The C63 19" multi-spokes are cast. Much weaker (and heavier) wheel.

And, for what it's worth, I suspect that most people with the 19" run lower tire pressures than what is recommended for 19" wheels and the weight of the car (45 psi f/r is what 19" wheels call for), which severely compromises the ability of the tire to absorb anything but the smallest imperfection on the pavement. If you're running 39 psi on 19s, a patched-up pothole or a manhole cover that you hit at speed would be enough for the rim to actually make contact with the pavement. Of course they're going to crack.

Not defending MB nor saying that the wheels are not weak or possibly even defective, but you have to take this into account when running stretched rubber bands instead of tires.

masterianvii

I am happy to report that after full 2 years of over-inflating to my tires + 3psi, I have not experienced any cracking. I can draw two possible conclusions. If this is a manufacturing defect, after cracking x number times and re-welding the wheel, the wheel has released any stress, and therefore no more cracking occurs. The other is that if the material really is too brittle and bumps and potholes can cause cracking, over-inflation works.

Either way, I don't think the solution is to buy another set. A new set will be manufactured the same way and is likely to be prone to the same cracking. Repairing is probably a better option as the wheel will have released any stress that has caused cracking. Of course depends where it cracks and how its repaired. The optimal solution is to get wheels from a different manufacturer, where the wheels are known to not suffer such problems.

Contacting AMG/MB is a big mountain to climb, but you've got the time and means, go for it.

DuaneC63

Given the condition of most public roads, cracking (or bending) a 19" wheel is just a matter of time. While wheels can be repaired by welding, heating, and bending this is a very dangerous option. Welding heats the metal beyond the temperature is was originally formed at (this applies to both cast and forged wheels). While the damaged portion is repaired the surrounding area is compromised. More catastrophic failures could occur to a welded wheel. The repaired wheel will most likely be out of round and significantly out of balance beyond the point of what wheel weights are designed to correct. Many AMG wheel are cast and cost upwards of $1,000 each. This is way overpriced. I would suggest, if you must have 19" wheel, you find an quality aftermarket set of wheels that when the bend or crack (which they will) it is much cheaper just to replace the damaged wheel. Three piece wheels are a more costly option as the center are usually forged and the outers (which take the beating) are spun cast and can be replaced without buying an entire new wheel.

ZephyrAMG

On the contrary...I was speaking to a wheel welder and from what he was saying, when you re-weld a piece of metal, the metal itself, not the weld joint per se, actually becomes stronger. If a wheel is rewelded properly, it actually is stronger in the metal. As for the balance, yes that can be thrown off but there are counter weights for that... So rewelding doesn't really compromise the wheel over the long run...

Diabolis

That's the biggest pile of crap I have ever heard. These are alloy wheels for high-performance vehicles, not thick steel barrels for a dump truck. Go weld away if you don't value your life but don't complain when it flies apart at 100 mph.

If you know anything about metal grain structures and stresses in aluminum and its alloys, it would be pretty obvious that there are massive problems with your statement. Even powder-coating is sometimes enough to weaken a wheel, and that's uniformly heating the entire wheel at once. Once you start heating only portions of the metal (as well as altering the composition at the welding seam), the entire molecular structure changes in the surrounding area which in aluminum plays havoc with the stress distribution in the area. What ends up happening is that the surrounding area gets progressively weaker until you end up with a fatigue break.

This is not only my opinion, but that of a very good friend of mine (also a gearhead) who has been working for Rolls-Royce Aerospace doing fatigue analysis in various alloys for a living. I take it he knows his metallurgy a little better than your welder.

Diabolis

Proper solutions are to (1) have wheels with more tire sidewall, (2) inflate the tires to the proper pressures (44-46 psi in the front) for the 19" wheels and watch how you drive and/or (3) buy stronger (forged) wheels. Repairing one-piece wheels is a recipe for disaster. Both of your "logical" conclusions are wrong. The only logical conclusion is that you haven't experienced any cracking because you haven't hit the rim against the pavement, either because of the higher air pressures in the tires or because you haven't hit any potholes. Plain and simple.

krish1976

I had the same exact issue. purchased an "approved used" 2010 c63 amg with 19in merc wheels in late august. The tire pressure light came on within a month of purchase and i called the dealer and showed it to him. they gave it the ok reset it and refilled the air. I then had the tire pressure light come on again and was losing air and when I took it back in again they this time told me it was cracked and that is why its losing air. Merc refused to accept responsibility despite my proof of email communication complaining about this for the 3 months since i had this car. Instead they gave me a massive bill and said they are not taking the loss. I cant wait to go back to the bmw. always had bmws and with my first merc in the first couple of months i have had nothing but issues. total miles traveled since purchase - about 550 of which 120 back and forth to dealer!

krish1976

oh yes and it cost me 700 quid for one wheel and said its a good will they are doing it for so cheap. looks like a scam to me. must be defective product.

krish1976

I had same issue within first month of having the car despite being told it was approved used. I took the car in multiple times when the tire pressure light was on and on my last trip they gave me the news that it will cost 700 pounds to replace without labor and other charges. had car for about 3 months and problem started a month into buying it. I rarely drove it and have been extremely cautious with pot holes etc. I had 3 bmws in the past will 18 or 19 wheels and have hit curbs while parking, pot holes and bumps hard but never had problems and always past safety test when i sold them.

masterianvii

I think it depends. There are different types of alloys with different compositions and different types of welding techniques for each. For wheel alloys, I believe 5xxx series alloy is used, which is a magnesium alloy. Those alloys are heat treatable because of the properties of Mg. There are various techniques for mitigating the molecular structure deformities which you speak of. Here is some good reading material on the subject:
http://mercury.kau.ac.kr/welding/Wel...m%20Alloys.pdf

Given the that I personally had hairline cracks on the inner lip of less than 1/2 inch long (which a lot of people do with these wheels), with proper welding the integrity of the alloy is not necessarily compromised. If I had actually bent the wheel, or cracked it in a spoke, where a serious weld would be required, I wouldn't take my chances, nor recommend to anyone do so.

As always some common sense is required, and of course if it makes you feel better and don't want to risk, you can always shell out the big bucks.

almoamg

Ride will probably depend on how you find the car right now and whether it has the "AMG Performance Suspension" which was offered on UK cars from 2012+. I almost went for 20's when I got my HRE's but was advised against it. I think when renewing wheels I would get 20s as they fill the arches a bit more on the coupe.

I have the black OEM 19 multispoke also and they are really heavy as they are cast alloys. Not had any cracking problems but only run them in winter. I think you might struggle to get cheap split rims of really good quality.

In the UK I find you have to drive with eagle eyes all the time to avoid the holes on our "fantastic" roads!

Diabolis

While it is possible to weld aluminium alloys, we're talking about a wheel of unknown composition here, not large cross-sectional rectangular welds for a specific industrial application. For starters, you'll never get the right alloy to begin with, and I can guarantee you that the stress distribution through the area that has been welded is never going to be uniform unless you afterwards melt the entire wheel and allow it to re-solidify. It's the same reason they don't weld aircraft panels together. Its a cheap fix that's a disaster waiting to happen.

I agree with you that common sense is required, but the only "sensible" question to ask yourself here is how much you value your life and determine whether the cost of a new wheel is greater than the risk to yourself and others.

masterianvii

It's not unknown. There is a fairly limited types of alloys for specific applications. Maybe one or two elements may differ, but the overall principles must be observed, which the core elements of the alloy's composition dictate. If it was completely unknown how would anyone certify safety standards and allow for these components to be legal?

What exactly is this disaster you're speaking of? Are we talking about the wheel exploding into fragments, losing control of the car, and crashing into imminent death? The only disaster I can foresee for such a "fix" is another crack near or around the weld area, resulting in the original problem. A slow and barely noticeable air leak, which may or may not result in another flat tire. I honestly think the chances of getting killed by a drunk driver far outweigh the chances of wrecking over an exploding rim due to negligent welding. By that logic we probably shouldn't even be driving on the road in the first place. Either way I did my research, I consulted with the right people, I fixed it, saved a $1000, and so far, so good.

As said before, there is always wheel insurance, and people who think its worth the price gladly pay for it.