Any insight would be helpful for a newbie before I go to dealer...Bought a 2007 E550 with 22,000 miles a month ago, now have 26,000...today driving down the highway got a flat...went to tire store store and my two front tires are wearing on the inside, tire actually shredded on inner driver front tire. Guy said may be an alignment issue?

Any experience with this? Going to go to dealer tomorrow...Thanks for your help!

 

Here is some help maybe. I bought an 07 E550 recently with 77K miles on it. The right front tire was wearing badly on the inside lip. The tire howled really bad as I drove and had a very bad high/low spot wear pattern. I took the car to an independant shop who was actually recommended by my main independant MB mechanic. This recommended shop actually did alignments on the first guys road race cars, ie, BMW's. His alignments were done by sight without the use of a computer generated flashing light system. Kinda the old fashioned way so to speak.

This second mechanic/owner told me that when cars are new they set the alignment to certain pre-determined settings. But after about 10/15K miles the cars suspension "settles" and these factory settings may not be good any longer. This can cause premature tire wear. Premature tire wear on low-profile tires can potentianlly cause the tires inner cord band to break thus causing a tire to blowout. So its advised to have a new car aligned after about 10/15K miles to compensate for this settling.

Sounds weird I know but its true. In this case this mechanic put my car on the alignment rack, took the readings by hand using some kind of attachment that hooked onto the outside of the rims. He then turned each front tire to the stops, took these "readings" from both front wheels, then went to his computer to see what the limit settings are from MB. He said that he added some more camber to the right side to compensate for the tire wear. I then put on a new right front tire and the car drove fine with no apparent alignment issues.

I must admit that soon after this was done I had to sell the car for family reasons. But I think if you do some research on the above mentioned scenario you might find that this could be helpful to your situation.

Good luck.

Jeff