K-Mac

Could be new car industry’s best kept secret (even exotic BMW ‘M’, Mercedes ‘AMG’ or Porsche ‘991’).... all dealers or alignment shops have to work with is Front and Rear TOE (directional adjustment).

No longer is there Front Camber and Caster or Rear Camber (and extra Toe) to change tire “contact angles”.

OK if vehicle maintained and driven at showroom height, but day to day commuting encountering high cambered roads, altered height through lowering, load carrying or suspension sag, fitting wide profile tyres, curb knock damage – the feature of having front and rear “ongoing Camber adjustment” capability is essential along with front Caster to “correctly resolve” steering pull and improve brake and steering response.

We saw the need therefore to design, manufacture (and reinstate from the early 90’s) kits that provide “precise/full” adjustment. The K-MAC patented design is single wrench – accurately under load, direct on alignment rack. Also replacing the 4 front and 4 rear highest wearing suspension bushings at the same time. Result is no more ongoing trips to dealers or alignment shops or constantly changing tire brands. Fixing it right the 1st time!

For the front (only) you can purchase fluted bolts – but they are inaccurate having ONE ONLY OFFSET POSITION.... providing only 3mm (1/8”) which is a minimal 0.3 degree change. The K-MAC design allows up to 3 times this adjustment range and is precise accurate, adjustable on car.

Rear K-MAC kits also provide Camber (and additional rear Toe adjustment to compensate for the new Camber facility). We do not manufacture rear Camber arms – as difficult to fit, access and adjust. Also to resolve premature inner edge tire wear need to reduce all important clearance top of tire to outer fender. Instead the K-MAC design replaces the “lower arm inner bushes” moving base of tire inwards (or outwards to increase negative camber/track width). Comes with bush extraction tool allowing the camber bushes to be installed on vehicle.

The front bushings are 2 axis/self aligning but without the oil and air voids of OEM. Result is noticeably improved brake and steering response. No modifications to fit – come with instructions and extraction/insertion tubes.

Also manufactured for the rear suspension is a full set of replacement bushings for the 6 multilink arms. Providing significant improvements to rear end stability. Less flex/twitch, increased traction especially when applying power lane changing/overtaking.

W213
Front Camber and Caster kit #503416K $480

Rear Camber (and extra Toe) bush kit #502226K $480
Rear multi link arms performance bush kit #502628K$480

Delivery $30 one or $20 each additional kit (average delivery time is 3 to 4 days). We accept PayPal, Visa or MasterCard.

Long Islander

You're lucky in that you actually got to see a 5-series with the spare tire option. I've been to 3 dealerships and not only did they not have any cars with this option, the salespeople had never actually seen a car with this option themselves. What I might do is to order the car with 19" tires (which only come in run flats) plus the spare tire option for $150. If I think I've lost too much space, I can always keeps the RFTs and then sell the spare tire kit and carrier, which is easily worth around $400, and restore the trunk to its non-spare state.

ua549

If you remove the spare tire and cover, a new trunk floor cover needs to be purchased to cover the bare sheet metal.

Long Islander

I was told by more than one person that if you remove the entire spare tire carrier, you could use the cover for that as your trunk floor cover. But, I suppose, the best thing is to find a car that has this option and see for myself.

Proeliator2001

Just giving an update to my tyre issues. So to recap, the front inside edges had worn out so the cords were showing yet 90 percent of the tyres have 5mm wear on them (versus 7mm when new). Basically they had worn to nothing and were in a dangerous state whereas looking at them at the roadside would give no indication of issues at all. Also, despite wearing evenly, it's not something the dealers will usually tell you about till it's too late. Not good.

So, car was checked by independent garage and front suspension is all within specb Merc dealer has 5 suggested tracking was out but it was spot on. They also said running low pressure (very low) could wear them like that but I've been running on/close to nominal pressure (or so I thought). Local garage owner has a lot of experience with Audi and has seen similar issues before with high negative camber set ups. He says he's seen it where Audi issue a bulletin some time after a car is released to raise the recommended/minimum tyre pressures to avoid this sort of wear. Having checked my indicated tyre pressures against when I believe to be a well calibrated gauge, the car reads about 1.5 psi high. I've been running at or very slightly below (.5psi/1psi) below what Mercedes recommend but, because of the gauge offset, I think I've actually been 2psi under recommended pressure. And this small shortfall coupled with negative camber levels on the E is enough to murder the tyres. I'm now keeping them 1psi above recommended level according to my gauge and will continue to do so. Hopefully they wear better.

It's annoying I can't even swap the tyres around to even out the wear as the Goodyear's are assymetric with an inside/outside edge so I can't do anything but mess with pressures.

I've done some 500,000 miles in cars over the years and never seen wear like this so thought its worth raising the importance of keeping pressures up so you can avoid needless cost on tyres and getting in to safety issues with knackered rubber.