mbgl550mb

Good Morning Fellow Owners:

About a week and half ago, I picked up a new 10' GL550. The vehicle currently has 490 miles on it. Driving it home from the dealership the day I bought it, I noticed, above 55-60 MPH, a 'shimmy' in the steering wheel and ride. I called the dealership and told them of the problem and they said that it was probably a flat spot in the tire and it will work itself out. After a couple of days of driving it, the 'shimmy' did not go away. I made an appointment with the dealer and they balanced and aligned the wheels. I can tell that they moved the wheel weights around because of the remaining sticky stuff that they did not get off from the previous location of the weights. Driving it home the 'shimmy' had improved, but still noticeable. The 'shimmy' is very apparent in comfort mode, but in sport mode not so much. It is bad enough at 70 MPH that the passenger seat vibrates. I am not sure if I am mad at the dealership for not fixing the problem before giving it back to me or the fact a $80K+ vehicle is already in the shop within 2 weeks. Has anyone had this same problem? Before taking it back to the dealership again, can someone tell me what else could be wrong?!?!?!? Hate to say it, but right now I am missing my ML550 because I never had any trouble with it..... please help

ksdprasad

mostly this may be due to bad tire. i also had the same problem. went multple times to dealership, finally they replaced my tire, and vibration gone.

wlee69

Not sure if the dealership uses a hunter roadforce balancing machine or not, but it sounds like one of the tires is out of "round". The hunter balancing machine can tell you if its within tolerance or not. I've had this happen to be many of times ordering tires from the tire rack where the tire is not within tolerance - and the tire shop just prints me out a sheet and I get an exchange from the tire rack. Has nothing to do with balancing of the wheel, but definitely affects the ride. Sometimes they can rotate the tire to a certain spot on the rim to make it less out of "round" as the rim itself could have a low spot and when combined with a high spot on the tire, it balances out.

But, replacing the tire sounds like the right thing. If they do not have a Hunter machine, then I'd just tell them to replace the tire!

alx

this.

some rim/tire combos simply cannot be balanced correctly with anything but a hunter dsp with roadforce.

check if dealer has said balancer, if not- find one and have them do the balancing and bill back the dealer as this should be warranty work.

the hunter website has a balancer locator that will tell you where the nearest certified install is.

dbtk

I had a vibration problem when I first picked up my GL350 which had run-flats. The dealership replaced 3 of the 4 tires and the vibration subsided.

StevethePilot

My steering wheel shimmy was one (one!) of the big reasons I went from one dealership to the other. Both have Hunter DSP RoadForce, but it seems only Schumacher knew how to use it properly. Four times at the "other" dealership downtown (with a half hour to 45 minute drive), first time at the closer one. And yes, it makes all the difference in the world when that's fixed.

pateljb

Had on 07' S550 with same problem after the tires were replaced at 20K miles. After 5 trips and multiple consults with MBUSA/continental it was determined that the tires had to be replaced because they sat on the shelf too long.

Note that this was after 3 attempts at rebalancing the tires with roadforce and replacing my wheels which they claim were bent from trauma. Mind you, the car had no bent wheels or even curb rash, ever.

All this was done under warranty with MBUSA supervising the job, so If I were you get MBUSA involved now rather than later especially since its a new car.

IDEAL21

Hello I do have the same problem with my 2013 GL 350 (21" rims) Pirelli tires.
Ever since i Picked up the car I had this feeling that there is some kind of vibration and I could also hear it like a whoo whoo whoo sound, I took it to the benz dealer and they tried to convince me that this is normal because of the very wide tires which causes road noise, after driving for few more months the vibration seemed to get worse, I took it back in this time I was lot more annoyed , I said that I spend 80 plus thousand of dollars for this car that vibrates thats not acceptable. I think that they know very well of this problem but they are doing what ever they can not to replace the tires. If they will not fix the problem I will take the dealer to court...

JimBarnhart

You need to get over to the X166 forum. This is a known problem with contaminated rotors on the 2013 models for a certain build date. They have to replace the rotors AND pads (the pads can cause the contamination to migrate to the new rotors).

IDEAL21

My SUV is currently in service and I did mention this to my service advisor at mercedes of possibility contaminated rotors, his response was that ohh no no no the rotors and brakes are perfectly even and fine. Since you mentioned the brakes you are right when I brake at low speeds I can hear more of that annoying uneven unbalanced woooo wooo wooo sound...

KipF

I had the same issue. Turned out to be defective Pirelli tires - 4 of them. Got them replaced under warranty and so far so good.

alx

yes. pirellis generally are junk. i have seen quite a few brand new tires that are out of round and no amount of balancing "fixes" them.

on a related note- i am not impressed even with their ultra high performance tires for sports cars...

IDEAL21

So dealer replaced all 4 brand new pirelli tires and I feel improvement, now it doesn't shake as much however my GL still doesn't feel smooth I still feel small vibration, disappointed MB owner
So could it possibly be my rotors and brake pads? I have noticed recently when I brake at very low speeds my brakes make loud squeaking sound and emit lots of dust from pads, dealer had looked at brakes and said it is normal , refused to change , they said just power wash the rotors with water under higher pressure and it should help. Also the drilled holes in rotors are totally clogged with brake dust, I will purchase power washer and see if it will help

N_Jay

Your rotors are probably dimpled and not drilled (unless you can actually push the dust through).

How worn are the pads?

IDEAL21

Hi N_Jay
The rotors are drilled through but the dust hardened and is really hard to push through, I will try to use something sharp and stiff to poke through.
The brake pads are worn 25% according to my service rep at MB, The sound they make sounds like a cruise ship horn (deep squeaking sound) from 10 km per hour to complete stop and more on a hot days, very embarrassing

JimBarnhart

sorry for the dupe