My 2017 E300 is 15 months old with a little more than 12,000 miles. Was stunned when I brought the car in for a recall and was told the rear tires (staggered) were worn on the inside. The dealer said that early wear on the rear tires is common on the newer E and C-class cars. Had little choice but to replace them.

 

Do you know if this happens to E300's with non-staggered wheels?

I have the 19" AMG wheels and they are not staggered.

 

My dealer said non-staggered will last longer because they can be rotated.

 

true

 

Rotating won't help if the tyres are Asymmetric as the inside edge stays on the inside whichever of the four corners you put it. Rotation only helps even wear out between driven and non driven axles. To avoid inside edge wear you only need swap left to right so staggered sizes don't matter then. However at least on my car they fitted assymetric tyres from the factory so I can't even do that.

I don't think run flats and Mercedes big negative camber play well; the stiff sidewall doesn't deflect and is pushed into the road with less load and hence less wear in the actual tread area. To try and save my second set of tyres I'm running them a few psi above the unloaded recommended pressure to push the centre of the tyre down and help unload the inside sidewall. Hasn't affected handling but will hopefully get better miles out the tyre.

 

What tire pressure are you running your tires at? When I picked up my car it was 39 front and 41 rear. I thought it rode too rough. I reduced to 38 all around. Certainly improved the ride in comfort mode.

 

Asymmetric tires have an "outside" and an "Inside", but the direction of rotation does not matter. So swapping asymmetric tires side-to-side can be done, because the "outside" side will still be facing out.

Many winter tires are directional, which means that the direction of rotation does matter, and those tires cannot be rotated side-to-side unless you unmount and remount and balance. Directional tires typically have an arrow on the sidewall that point in the direction of (forward) rotation.

Having said that, swapping the tires side-to-side is not likely to help the inside wear problem, because the inside will still be inside.

 

Yes, reason is there is only front and rear Toe (directional) adjustment. OEM there is no "Camber" or "Caster" adjustment facility which is essential to change time contact angles!

We saw the need therefore to reinstate from the early '90's full/precise adjustment capability to suit all Mercedes models through to 2017.

The K-MAC patented design provides precise, single wrench adjustment - accurately (under load) direct on alignment rack.

CAMBER - allowing to actually change the tire contact angles to resolve costly, premature edge tire wear, improving traction / understeer / oversteer.

CASTER – Correctly resolves steering pull, increases steering response. With better turn in and high speed directional control. Along with anti dive/lift under brake and acceleration.

With "Ongoing adjustment" - catering for day to day commuting encountering high cambered roads, altered height through load carrying or lowering. Fitting wide profile tires or curl knock damage.

FIXING IT RIGHT THE 1st TIME - No more the frustration of ongoing trips to dealers, alignment shops where a "Full Front and Rear Wheel Alignment" is this Toe only adjustment. Or going down the path of constantly changing tire brands!

For the front (only) you can fit inaccurate, basic "one offset position" fluted bolts - but they only offer a minimal 0.3 degrees (1/8") change! With K-MAC Front (and Rear) providing 4 times this amount and precisely adjustable!

Extra feature is the front kit replaces the 4 highest wearing bushings and is 2 axis/mono ball (self aligning) without the OEM oil and air voids. Result is noticeably improved brake and steering response.

Rear kit also provides precise Camber adjustment for the first time (and extra Toe adjustment to compensate for the new Camber facility).

Another popular kit manufactured is uprated replacement bushings (12) for the '6' multi link rear arms. Providing significant improvement to rear end stability. Less twitch/flex, improved traction especially when applying power to lane change / overtake.

E Class (W213):
Front Camber and Caster kit #502816L $545
Rear Camber (and extra Toe) #502226K $480
Rear Bushing kit (12) for the 6 multi link arms #502628K $480

Delivery one kit $30. Each additional kit $20. PayPal, Visa or MasterCard. Toll Free 1888 414 0762 (24/7) dealer inquires welcome.

 

This update. Turns out my wheels are not staggered, as the dealer's "tire guy" said they were. When I called him on it he said he sees so many tires that he assumed these were. The bigger problem is that the rear tires wore, on the inside, after less than 13k miles. And this assumes they were rotated (I don't know if they were) at the 10k service. The dealers says they have since seen several new e300s with similar premature wear. Trouble is - I had to buy two new tires. There is something wrong with this picture. Tires should not wear at sub-13k miles. Oh, and the tires were well-maintained and had been aligned once in the first 13k miles by the dealer because of a blown tire, with nothing else unusual (big potholes) during the span.

 

I would not go back to this dealer for service for several reasons:

1. The so called tire guy has no knowledge of your tire size and "assume" they were staggered.
2. You wheels were aligned by the dealer, but they either did a lousy job or did not do it.
3. Since the wheels were aligned by them and now you got premature wear and have to replace tires, they conveniently told you that they have seen several new cars had similar problem. Hogwash!

Too many times, I have seen dealers tried to BS to customers and assume they know nothing. Go to another dealer for any service in the future unless you like the way they treated you.

 

13k miles for a set of tires is just about what I averaged over the past 10 years of mostly city driving. I rotate, balance and align every 5k miles. I replace all 4 tires at the same time. My BMW 535i came with Goodyear Eagle Sport tires. After that I bought Michelin Pilot Sport A/S, Continental Extreme Contact and Pirelli P Zero tires. I sold the car with 57,000 miles. The treads were worn down to 5/32". It was ready for its fifth set of tires.

 

That's surprising to hear. I can't imagine most drivers of E300s would be happy with that. My wife drives a 2009 C350 and has replaced non-runflat tires once in her <60k miles, ALL city driving. And I don't think I ever had to replace tires in any car with less than 25k miles. My last car was a 2008 BMW wagon with >100k miles, mostly highway, runflats.

 

 

My 2017 E300 is a 4matic. Car has about 15500 miles and the tires are evenly worn. Tread measurements show that I will get around 40,000 miles before replacement is required. Tires are Perilli P7 18" runflats. I can't understand how all season tires on rear-drive cars would be wearing out so fast and unevenly.