PLuKE

Well, 8 weeks in with my W213 and I found another issue.

The car has covered 51k, and running on 20" AMG wheels with Goodyear Eagle F1 RFT.

I can feel/hear a roughness from the front right wheel area around the 90mph. Tyre is wearing fine, tyre pressure correct etc. I know the wheel has been repaired before I picked the car up from the Mercedes dealer. It has a very faint buckle in the wheel, I could see it when the wheel was on the balancing machine, again, its faint, BUT the wheel has 105g of wheel weight, most of which is in one line around 6-8cm long.

As a side note: I replaced the tyre it came with the car, as that was worn in a groove shape several places on the inner edge right down the the cord, that was also weighted quite a lot around 100g.

Any input?

jhpmbusa

was the repair cosmetic or was it bent? I do not believe a bent rim can ever be 100% again.

PLuKE

I am not 100%, around the edge of the rim has been polished back and re-lacquered, as there’s no machining marks on the diamond cut facing, from memory the workshop sheet stated something on there, I will have to look tomorrow when I get home.

That wheel has had 2 tyres on, both with 100g or so of wheel weights added, so something isn’t quite right!

I am am hoping that’s the cause of the noise as the tyre wouldn’t be full in contact with the road surface?

Thanks

F1Fan

Wheel weights typically come in ounces. If you have 105 grams of wheel weight, that's about 3.7 ounces. The tape weights usually come in either .25 or .5 ounce sizes. So if you need 3.7 ounces, you are talking about at least 7 of the .5 ounce sizes along with a .25 ounce weight a total of 8 weights taped to your wheel. That is a lot! The reason why is because the wheel was not repaired properly. I had a similar situation where I was told a wheel was repaired. New tire was mounted and balanced. However at high speed I had a vibration. I had a brand new full size spare that I swapped it with and the vibration disappeared. There should be no buckle at all on the wheel. At 90mph, it is absolutely critical that the wheels are perfectly balanced.

My suggestion to you is to get rid of that wheel as soon as you can. A high speed vibration will, over time, destroy your suspension. All of the suspension components will wear out much faster. I know this because that's exactly what happened to me. I thought i could get away with it, but I ended up paying way more money having to rebuild the suspension. Don't mess around with trying to repair the wheel. No wheel repair shop has any way to spin the wheel to 90mph to see if the wheel is balanced.

madtrader

It sounds like the wheel is the most likely culprit, but many years ago we had a vibration at higher speed in a Mercedes wagon that turned out to be out of round Pirelli tires. It was surprise, but quickly remedied for no extra cost to us (dealer swapped them out).

jhpmbusa

I just checked my front right tire yesterday and there are 9 * .5 ounce tapes on them. Is this abnormal? What can be done about this and should this be a warranty/defect issue? Thanks!

ua549

Keep in mind that tires are never perfectly balanced so the issue may not be due entirely to the wheel. I'd have the wheel balanced without the tire mounted.