From what I've seen/read a lot of you guys have found the stock wheel offerings on the new CLS a bit lacking.

I have to agree that while the wheel package +1 19" wheels help a lot, with the low volume of this car some of us have had to deal with buying a car off the lot with the standard 18" wheels, or even the wheel package 18" wheels.

That was the situation my dad found himself in when he got a good offer to buy and otherwise nicely equipped 550 4matic off the lot. He is not the type of person to modify a brand new car, but even he asked me what we could do about the stock wheels.

Replacing them with a new set was a bit confusing, and even though I've been around the car scene for a bit I had trouble finding what offsets would be the best compromise between keeping the factory ride quality/speedo settings.

Obviously when going with a + 1 set-up the ride will suffer a bit, and you have to be a more mindful of damage and potholes.

My goal was to keep pretty close to the OEM Mercedes + 1 wheel package, while getting a little closer to being flush with the fender.

I was able to find the specs for the factory 18" wheels. They are as follows

Fronts
18 x 8.5 eta 34.5

Rears

18 x 9.5 eta 48

Now, the offset may be confusing. The easiest way to think of it is to think in terms of mm's. The lower your offset is the more the wheels will stick out.

Take the rear wheels. The offset on those is 48. So if you went with a 38 offset your wheels would stick out by 10 mm more from the edge of the wheel rim.

The stock wheels in the rear esp. are a but sunken in for my taste. I decided to measure from the wheel rim and see how much room we had to push them out a bit without going over the factory 9.5 width.

We decided on 35 offset before we even called the wheel manufacturer. Once I called him and he said the most common setup for the W212 E was a 30 front, 35 rear we decided to order the wheels in that spec.

In the end the wheels on the front will be kicked out by 4.5 mm, and the rear will be kicked out by 13mm.

We will still be using the factory specd tire size for the +1 package (255 35) and (285 30)


For this application the stock wheels are going to be used for winter duty so we wanted to keep the stock TPMS system in place. Keep in mind if you aren't just replacing your stock wheels and chucking them you will probably want to purchase TPMS sensors for the new wheels. That way when it comes time to swap for winter you don't have to pay to have the tires broken down off the wheels and risk damage swapping out the TPMS sensors. We ended up getting TPMS sensors to put in the new wheels at a cost of 230 for the set with installation. These will typically run you anywhere from 230-300 with installation.

Make sure you use a shop that knows what they are doing when it comes to getting replacement sensors. They can run a quick test using the valve stem to see what you require. The MB TPMS shows the actual psi on the dash readout, where as others just notify for low pressure warnings.

I will update this thread as we get them mounted to see how it works out. The wheels should be in this week, and we are going with Bridgestone tires through our local guy.

I hope this helps out some people looking to run somewhat conservative aftermarket wheels on their new CLS's. I tried my best to find good info, but came up short. This forum tied up some loose ends for me, but I was never able to find exact specs for replacing the wheels to 19" as close to factory spec as possible.

We decided to go with the S63 AMG style reps.
Here they are on the show S63 MB made.



Reps should look like this, but with a bit more of a machined finish on the non-graphite parts.



A photoshop of my dads 2 day old car to show what it should look like.
Attachment 449671

 

Your research is appreciated. Great info. I had a really hard time with wheel upgrade initially. Thankfully my local wheel shop here knows what they are doing. I'm thinking of a different set now and also along your same thoughts on keeping as oem as possible.
Please post up some pics when you get new wheels on.

 

did you lower it

 

I think the offsets on the stock rims are not nearly close to aggressive enough. I saw a stock cls 550 where they used wheel spacers to bring the optional 19's out some and it looked way better. Just as a comparison to stock offsets and I'll be the first to say Vossen sets up a super agressive offset for the cls but they are 9x20 et20 and 10.5x20 et30

 

With the stock 18"s I measured yesterday you have tons of room in the rear.

10.5x20 et30 in the rear would fill out nicely. With the stock 19"s I think a 10-15mm spacer would be perfect.

 

Look what came in today. Pretty impressed for the price. The machined area looks great next to the graphite. Waiting on sensors and tires. Hopefully mounted by end of week.

 

I had a chance to go over the wheels thoroughly this afternoon. Very impressed with the quality as far as replica wheels go. Just a small bubble in the clear coat on one wheel. Something so minor you would never notice it. These wheels will only be seeing summer duty as my dad lives in Detroit area so I won't be able to say how they hold up to salt and bad weather.

 

Looks fantastic. I hit a metal pipe on Interstate a few weeks ago on front passenger tire. The tire popped, but car did not make a move. Straight as an arrow. My Replica wheel was damaged. It got pinched in at lip. Now looking for a change. Please keep this thread going. Would love to see the end product. Prob will replicate your replicas.

 

I really hope they get the tires and sensors in at the end of the week. I'll take good pictures with my real camera then. I want to send some good pics to the site I bought the wheels from. They have nothing, just stock photos so it was kind of a crap shoot.

Don't feel bad about bending your rep wheels tho, my dads previous E550 had the stock sport pack AMG 18's on it. Totally factory wheels and, well..... I have two sitting the back of my shop right now bent that I may sell or give away. He hit a pot hole with his passenger front and bent that bad, then the rear hit and bent. Both wheels bent enough to break the bead and deflate. I guess either the roads here are terrible, or Mercedes just makes pretty soft wheels. They had more sidewall than your 19's and shouldn't have bent that bad.

 

Just set it up in front of the current wheels and photoshopped it to look how it should look.

Still waiting on sensors!

 

You know that you can use existing sensors from stock wheels right?

 

Yes, but he doesn't want to have to deal with breaking the tires off the wheels and swapping out the sensors everytime he switches over from summer to winter duty. This way I can just do the swap over in winter in the back of our shop without having to make an appt with the tire store come winter time.

 

Well the fronts don't fit. It's such a pain as they fit perfectly fine untill they are torqued down. It's less than a MM of clearance that is causing the issue. The spokes of the wheels hit in two spots on the ledge of the caliper.

I circled the spots here.




It's so slight that if you drove the car for a minute it grind itself down and fit, but I don't want to do that. The suggestion my tire guy had made the most sense. Since the calipers are machine finish you could slightly bevel that edge of the caliper where they are hitting to gain the clearance. Usually I would run a small spacer, but being as it's sooooo damn close I think grinding down the caliper will work fine.

They did look good on the car jacked up in the air tho, haha. I'm going to make clearance on monday and hopefully have them fitting by the end of the day.

Be aware of this if you are looking at wheels, the front calipers are huge and stick out quite a bit so it could cause this issues with some wheels.

 

Use H&R 3mm spacers - part number 0655665. They do fit on the front hub with enough hub left to seat the wheel on (FYI, even 5mm spacers fit upfront, should you need them).

 

I would go the spacer route if the clearance weren't as little as it is. It really is less than 1mm needed. The car is driveable with the wheels on, it just barely rubs. It's probably two index cards width of an issue, but just to be safe I'm going to do a light crescent shaped 1mm grinding on that lip of the caliper.

 

Any update on this thread?

I'm wondering how these replica wheels ended-up fitting, and how they look on the car? I'm also curious about how they're holding-up (quality)...


Jimmy

 

They turned out to have no issues over the season last year. Fitment has been fine, they held up really well on our terrible Detroit area roads. We just put them back on a week ago for the season. Had them balanced and check out by my wheel guy before I threw them on and everythings fine.

You can tell the difference with these on over the stock 18's. It has a more planted less squishy feel. The car tracks better and you can feel the road a lot more.

Here is a shot from last year.

Attachment 448726

 

Did you have to use spacers on the front?

I'm thinking of getting the exact same wheel setup for my 2014 CLS550 (on order). I was talking to the fellow at USA Rim, and he didn't seem to think they'd need a spacer...

If you used a spacer on the front, what size did you get? (you eluded to a 2mm or 3mm in your previous post). Also, what brand did you use? Any issue with the spacer?


Jimmy

 

I decided not to use spacers. The clearance issue was so slight that we decided to shave down the "ledge" or sharp edge that I circled above on the caliper.

I don't know how much I'd trust the wheel supplier as I was also told these wheels would run with no issue. It turned out that we also had an issue with the wheel studs being too long. I had to do some grinding on those as well. I took off a thread and a half from the wheel studs. They were hitting the back of the hub before they reached tq. spec for the wheels.

Keep in mind though that when we got these wheels this model CLS was fresh on the market so from what I gathered most wheel suppliers were under the impression that "if it fits on the current E-Class it'll fit on that"

They seemed surprised when I called and said we were having issues. I imagine now that a year or so has passed they hopefully have a better grasp of the car and have made the appropriate changes to their recomendations.

It sounds like you are planning on running the same wheels when you take delivery of your car in the future. Feel free to PM me if you need any more information. I have some more pics and measurements back on my office computer but I'm in and out of there at this point. I should be able to get some more info sometime Monday or Tuesday.

I found some more pics
Attachment 448722
Attachment 448723
Attachment 448724

 

Greta post thanks for all the info.
I have my 2014 arriving in about 6 weeks.
Would you mind letting me know who you purchased the wheels from?
Thanks in advance and the car looks great!


Oh and would you mid just confirming the wheel diameter you finally went with?... 19's or 20's?
Thanks!

 

I got them from usarim. It's been a while but I think this is the direct link.

The wheels are 19x8.5 front, 19x9.5 rear. You would run the same size tires as the wheel package +1 from MB but the offsets are a little more aggresive. Just off the top of my head I think with these wheels you'll get +4mm and +8mm over the wheel package+1 wheels from MB. I'm being conserative because like I said I'm just going from memory.

 

oops forgot to link here it is

http://www.usarim.com/mercedes-wheel...ms-p-1872.html

 

hey thanks so much for the fast reply!
I am getting wheel package +1 and want to stick to 19" wheels because this will be my daily driver. I have 20's on my CLS 55 and there isn't much forgiveness with those for every day driving.
I will call USA Rim. Did you order the two tone effect as a special order.. I see they only have one style available now by the looks of it and your center spoke looks like it is gunmetal with the spokes on either side, machined. Love that look.
Thanks again!
Cheers
Andrey

 

Sorry to interrupt with My own selfish question. Does anybody know if 20" 8.5 front 9.5 rear and the offset is +35 all the way around will the fit the cls??