I bought a set of slightly used MBZ 16x7.5 5-hole wheels with positive 40mm offset for my summer tires for my E-420. When I went to have the tires put on the wheels the tire service guy said the lug bolts were bottoming out on the hub when putting on the new wheels on the rear wheels. Anyone ever have this problem? Is it caused by the 40mm offset? Does someone sell shorter mercedes lugs to fix this?

 

Give Luke at Tire Rack a call (check out the Wheel, Tires, Brakes and Suspension forum for his direct number), he should be able to get you what you need.

 

I am not sure if you went to the Wheel/Tire forum to ask Luke, but I had a similiar problem with aftermarket wheels. But let me ask a couple of question first.

1. The 16" wheels, are they E-Class wheels or are they from another body style?

If they are from a different body style, the length of the lug bolts vary.


2. What type of wheels did you have before replacing to the summer tire combo? Stock E420 or aftermarket?

If stock, then the lug bolts may still be too long because the style of wheel is different. If aftermarket, make sure that you are using ball seat lug bolts for the 16" wheels, some aftermarket wheels use a more common 60 degree taper seat.


My experience, with my new aftermarket wheels, they do use taper seat lug bolts. When I installed the rear wheels, they are wider than the fronts, I could feel/hear a slight interference with the internal parking brake parts. The rememdy was shorter lugs. Make sure that you get, at least, 6.5 full turns into the threaded hole. I don't know the exact length of the new lug bolts, but they were about 5 or 6mm shorter.

The Tirerack rep. indicated that with aftermarket wheels and Mercedes wheel fitments, inside parking brake clearance is tight and some cases will need shorter lug bolts. This can vary from car to car being the same model.

Hope this helps,

Rob Lee

 

The almost-new aftermarket wheels look exactly like the stock wheels that came with my 97 E-420. They were advertised as MBZ E-class wheels. I called and talked to Luke at Tirerack and found out that they are probably not OEM wheels and would likely need shorter lugs to avoid interfering with the parking brakes. He recommended getting the new lugs from the guys who sold me the wheels. I then called Discount Tires Direct in AZ, who sold them to me, and explained my problem. The salesrep looked up my order and confirmed that the wheels were aftermarket replicas. He sold me lugs which he said would fit. I just received the lugs today. They are 12 mm lugs, shorter than the original Mercedes lugs and do not have a taper. Will post how they fit.