Hi,

I recently installed brand new 19x8.5 rims on my E550, with 4 brand new Pirellis Pzero. 235/35/19

Right after I walk out of the garage and hit the highway I notice a king of intense wheel shake.

I return the to garage they rebalance the weels, nothing... car still shakes on the highway.

I then got the wheels force matched, it helped but I can still feel a small vibration on a straight line, the vibration intersifies when I turn the wheel on the highway.

Tried playing with the tire pressure best was 35PSI ( still some shaking but less) anything below or above makes it worse.

At this point im thinking it migh be a mechanical problem, I went to the dealership told them about the issue and had a full inspection done on the car. (axel ok, steering ok, brakes ok)

Nothing no problems whit the car, the conculsion of the dealership tires are not wide enough.

I have seen many members here with 235/35/19x 8.5 and havent head of any similar issues.

Any ideas before I lose my mind!!!!???

 

Are your new wheels hub centered? If not get the centering rings and be happy.

 

Arrie is right on if your wheels are aftermarket. Without hub centric rings you are lug-centric, and that is not good. Rings are dirt cheap.

 

I’m on it because this exact thing happened to myself.

Had the after market wheels put on but with quite bad shake on steering wheel. Re-balanced, no help. Then the tire shop replaced the lug bolts with conical bolts. This helped just a little bit but not good. After this they installed the centering rings and just magically all went very smooth.

 

Thanks for the insight, took of the wheel this morning, but the gap is less than 1mm, do they even make rings that small?

 

They make rings of all sizes to fill that gap as small as it is. I would try to fill it with the proper ring and make sure the lugs are torqued exactly to spec

 

Yes,

the error in centering the wheel that cause the shake is way is way less than a mm. Rings can be made to whatever they need to be.

 

Any website where I can order?

, been looking arround cant find anything that covers 1mm gap. best I found was 5mm or using tape lol

 

Ebay or amazon. You need to match the wheel opening and reduce to the car hub. You need both dimensions to order.

 

Besides ensuring hub-centric installation, a key element was also mentioned - using the correct seat angle wheel bolts. Even a slight difference in degrees in the angle can cause the wheel to shift slightly as it rotates.

 

Geez, all this banter over 1mm (.039") reaffirms my contentment with my stock wheels.

 

Stock is always the best. Aftermarket must use hub centric rings or wobble

 

I'm not an expert on this by any means but I would assume the rings are available for all sizes. I guess I was lucky as the tire shop had the rings to fit my American Racing wheels. They are made of plastic and are about 4 - 5 mm thick. But they surely took care of the issue.

If you look at the MB lug bolts they are rounded like ball surface and do not do a good job with centering the wheel obviously as the centering is done with the wheel hole fit over the shoulder on the hub. Without the center alignment conical bolts are needed that are made to center the wheel but this did not work for me and the tire shop made comments that MB wheels / tires are difficult in general to balance correctly. The issue may be that MB does not position the lug bolt holes very accurately as they use hub centric wheel mounting.

As your ring would need to be very thin it probably would be made of some metal as plastics are not easy to machine when very thin.

 

The fact is they do make rings that close the 1mm gap. The shop you bought the wheels from should have supplied them to you. Shame on them. That is a poor shop.

 

One other thing to check is to have the tire shop spin up each tire, off the car, and check for both vertical and horizontal run-out. Many years ago I had a similar problem, coincidentally also with Pirelli tires. The tire shop finally put the tires on the balancer and checked them, and they weren't even round! Three of the four tires had visible up and down motion, meaning vertical run-out. Changed out to a different model tire, and car was smooth as glass. All it takes is one tire to make you crazy. . .