Acadianlion

My Alcar wheels arrived from Germany very quickly and my winter tires arrived today. The next issue...and it seems to be an issue....is finding the correct wheel bolts. The CLK was never imported by Mercedes with steel wheels. Apparently there isn't even a steel wheel option available from Mercedes. The steel wheels will require wheel bolts that are 20mm shorter than the 40mm bolts that came on the car with it's alloy wheels. This is the same wheel bolt that is used with the spare wheel: M12x1.5 20mm with R12 ball head.

I haven't yet dared to ask the Mercedes dealer what the price of twenty of the spare wheel bolts would be, but that appears to be the only real way to get the correct bolt. I think the dealer would order twenty of them for me although they would be ordering by my car's VIN which is the way they do things. I wonder how much the bolts might cost?

My goal is to maintain this car to a 100% OEM standard as best I can which is why I bought the wheels form a tuner in Germany. They do not have appropriate sized bolts at this time though. Any thoughts? I need to get the winter wheel/tire combination on the car early in November.

Thanks

dzmitry

From what I found spare tire bolts are very cheap ($10 per set of 5), part # 203-580-00-10. Also there is another option: h&r has similar bolts 28mm (instead of 21mm original spare tire bolts) http://www.hrsprings.com/applications/bolts. I'm using h&r bolts since my wheels also required shorter bolts.

Acadianlion

I finally called the dealer in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where I had taken the car for the sunroof recall. They never hesitated and have ordered four sets of bolts as indicated by the car's VIN. $20 a set so I'm am likely paying a premium for having bought them as "genuine" Mercedes parts. I really need to get on with this process though as Maine may see its first snow of the season on Friday. While I don't plan to drive this car in all sorts of Maine winter, it's almost cold enough to not drive with summer tires regardless.

One nice day next week I'll have a drive to Portsmouth and back and the new tires and wheels will be on the car by that weekend.