Weird handling on rough roads...
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Weird handling on rough roads...
Since we've owned our GLE43 Coupe, we've always noticed that on certain roads, the vehicle is actually thrown around (probably not the greatest way to describe it), and at times actually hard to keep between the lines, since we have the wide tires on the 22" rims.
We live in the country, and the paved road that we take into town is one of the worse offenders of this. I always attributed the problem with this road to the fact that there a lot of semis that drive on it, and the road has 4 distinct tire grooves from the semi tires. Since the tires are so wide, it vacillates between the different grooves. Annoying, but not really a big deal.
However, lately, the vehicle has started doing this thing where it will try to "compensate" for this behavior, and you can actually feel it applying brakes on the different corners to try and get you back where it "thinks" you should be. This weekend, we drove on a road that exhibited this so bad that I had to slow down to keep it from doing this. This road didn't have the tire track issue, it was just a "rough" paved road. After slowing down, I put turned the traction control off to see if that helped, and that helped, and actually seemed to make the vehicle drive smoother. Interestingly, turning off traction control on our road into town typically doesn't do much. It might improve the wheels braking / correcting, but it doesn't improve the side to side movement that we tend to get.
I actually wonder if there's not something wrong with the suspension on our vehicle. When we are in comfort mode, it is still pretty stiff. I don't specifically remember that on the test drives that we took, but I don't recall us going on any roads that would have probably had issues either.
Has anyone else experienced any of these type of issues?
We live in the country, and the paved road that we take into town is one of the worse offenders of this. I always attributed the problem with this road to the fact that there a lot of semis that drive on it, and the road has 4 distinct tire grooves from the semi tires. Since the tires are so wide, it vacillates between the different grooves. Annoying, but not really a big deal.
However, lately, the vehicle has started doing this thing where it will try to "compensate" for this behavior, and you can actually feel it applying brakes on the different corners to try and get you back where it "thinks" you should be. This weekend, we drove on a road that exhibited this so bad that I had to slow down to keep it from doing this. This road didn't have the tire track issue, it was just a "rough" paved road. After slowing down, I put turned the traction control off to see if that helped, and that helped, and actually seemed to make the vehicle drive smoother. Interestingly, turning off traction control on our road into town typically doesn't do much. It might improve the wheels braking / correcting, but it doesn't improve the side to side movement that we tend to get.
I actually wonder if there's not something wrong with the suspension on our vehicle. When we are in comfort mode, it is still pretty stiff. I don't specifically remember that on the test drives that we took, but I don't recall us going on any roads that would have probably had issues either.
Has anyone else experienced any of these type of issues?
#2
no, but.
if you have active lane, consider the following. if the ruts are so bad that the cameras think they are lane delineation, it might try to keep you inside of them. regarding bouncing around, my gle350 has the high wind assist (as yours probably does). i can't believe that there are enough sensors to tell if wind is moving you sideways or you're bouncing that way. so the wind assist may be kicking in.
as far as suspension is concerned, all i can say is real sport suspension is not focused on comfort. i avoid bumpy roads as much as possible when driving my porsche.
hope this helps some. good luck, ron
if you have active lane, consider the following. if the ruts are so bad that the cameras think they are lane delineation, it might try to keep you inside of them. regarding bouncing around, my gle350 has the high wind assist (as yours probably does). i can't believe that there are enough sensors to tell if wind is moving you sideways or you're bouncing that way. so the wind assist may be kicking in.
as far as suspension is concerned, all i can say is real sport suspension is not focused on comfort. i avoid bumpy roads as much as possible when driving my porsche.
hope this helps some. good luck, ron
#3
Senior Member
Thread Starter
no, but.
if you have active lane, consider the following. if the ruts are so bad that the cameras think they are lane delineation, it might try to keep you inside of them. regarding bouncing around, my gle350 has the high wind assist (as yours probably does). i can't believe that there are enough sensors to tell if wind is moving you sideways or you're bouncing that way. so the wind assist may be kicking in.
...
if you have active lane, consider the following. if the ruts are so bad that the cameras think they are lane delineation, it might try to keep you inside of them. regarding bouncing around, my gle350 has the high wind assist (as yours probably does). i can't believe that there are enough sensors to tell if wind is moving you sideways or you're bouncing that way. so the wind assist may be kicking in.
...
Good thought on the active lane piece, and it seeing the ruts as lane delineation. However, the road that we were on this past weekend did NOT have that. That rough was more of a washboard type situation, yes, on a paved road, and it was like it was trying to apply the brakes every the top of every washboard. It was weird, for sure.
I've also thought about the high wind causing the issue, and I've watched for that, because our road into town is a road that often times has a cross wind, and the wind blows hard here often. I will say, that it is "worse" on windy days, but it will exhibit the same phenomena on completely calm days. And, this weekend, it was perfectly calm when we were on the washboard road.
At the end of the day, I don't feel like anything is necessarily "wrong" with the vehicle, it does make me wonder why ours does this. I also realize that I'm NOT going to get the issue replicated at MB, unless they come and drive on the road that causes this, and that's 40 miles from the dealership, and even then, that's not a guarantee, because it doesn't do it all the time...
#4
I mounted 22s with summer tires on Saturday (had 21s in the winter), but had to leave town right away on Sunday.
On the couple of trips I took, I did not see the behavior you described, but did not travel any truly rough roads. On bumpy sections, however, the wheels bounced around in the wheel wells like beachballs, which threw the car around a bit.
I was running 38-39 PSI, reduced it to 29-30 PSI. It seemed to help quite a bit, but I only went on 1 drive. When I get back next week, I will let you what I see.
And yes, the car seemed to run very stiff in comfort mode, much stiffer than on the 21s.
#5
Senior Member
Thread Starter
I mounted 22s with summer tires on Saturday (had 21s in the winter), but had to leave town right away on Sunday.
On the couple of trips I took, I did not see the behavior you described, but did not travel any truly rough roads. On bumpy sections, however, the wheels bounced around in the wheel wells like beachballs, which threw the car around a bit.
I was running 38-39 PSI, reduced it to 29-30 PSI. It seemed to help quite a bit, but I only went on 1 drive. When I get back next week, I will let you what I see.
And yes, the car seemed to run very stiff in comfort mode, much stiffer than on the 21s.
Your description of "throwing the car around a bit" is a VERY accurate description of what it feels like.
I haven't messed with the air pressure, but that's definitely something that I'll try to see if I see the same results.
While I get that the side walls are shorter on 22" wheels, I wouldn't think that it would make that much difference from 21-22. Good to know though, that I might be expecting too much of a soft ride, and I'll never get there...
#7
Senior Member
Thread Starter
I need to turn off Lane keep and see what happens next...
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#8
Since we've owned our GLE43 Coupe, we've always noticed that on certain roads, the vehicle is actually thrown around (probably not the greatest way to describe it), and at times actually hard to keep between the lines, since we have the wide tires on the 22" rims.
We live in the country, and the paved road that we take into town is one of the worse offenders of this. I always attributed the problem with this road to the fact that there a lot of semis that drive on it, and the road has 4 distinct tire grooves from the semi tires. Since the tires are so wide, it vacillates between the different grooves. Annoying, but not really a big deal.
However, lately, the vehicle has started doing this thing where it will try to "compensate" for this behavior, and you can actually feel it applying brakes on the different corners to try and get you back where it "thinks" you should be. This weekend, we drove on a road that exhibited this so bad that I had to slow down to keep it from doing this. This road didn't have the tire track issue, it was just a "rough" paved road. After slowing down, I put turned the traction control off to see if that helped, and that helped, and actually seemed to make the vehicle drive smoother. Interestingly, turning off traction control on our road into town typically doesn't do much. It might improve the wheels braking / correcting, but it doesn't improve the side to side movement that we tend to get.
I actually wonder if there's not something wrong with the suspension on our vehicle. When we are in comfort mode, it is still pretty stiff. I don't specifically remember that on the test drives that we took, but I don't recall us going on any roads that would have probably had issues either.
Has anyone else experienced any of these type of issues?
We live in the country, and the paved road that we take into town is one of the worse offenders of this. I always attributed the problem with this road to the fact that there a lot of semis that drive on it, and the road has 4 distinct tire grooves from the semi tires. Since the tires are so wide, it vacillates between the different grooves. Annoying, but not really a big deal.
However, lately, the vehicle has started doing this thing where it will try to "compensate" for this behavior, and you can actually feel it applying brakes on the different corners to try and get you back where it "thinks" you should be. This weekend, we drove on a road that exhibited this so bad that I had to slow down to keep it from doing this. This road didn't have the tire track issue, it was just a "rough" paved road. After slowing down, I put turned the traction control off to see if that helped, and that helped, and actually seemed to make the vehicle drive smoother. Interestingly, turning off traction control on our road into town typically doesn't do much. It might improve the wheels braking / correcting, but it doesn't improve the side to side movement that we tend to get.
I actually wonder if there's not something wrong with the suspension on our vehicle. When we are in comfort mode, it is still pretty stiff. I don't specifically remember that on the test drives that we took, but I don't recall us going on any roads that would have probably had issues either.
Has anyone else experienced any of these type of issues?