KMac’s bushings use an eccentric built into the bushing. Easily adjusted with the car on the alignment rack.

 

but you don't need it - the designed in adjustment brings the right front camber bang in line for $5

which makes me think the Germans intentionally set the right front in this manner to help it drive straight - but as rather stupid, they have failed to recognise two critical things

a) 1/3 of the world drive on the correct side of the road - not the wrong side Napoleon mandated to all the countries the french try to control
b) many countries have their own interpretation of how much road camber they build in for drainage and to help cars stay separated in opposing lanes - so the suspension correction needs to be market dependant not some **** mandate

 

Botus point is that even cars with fresh bushings (Jay’s Brabus K8 comes immediately to mind) end up driving MUCH better after installation of KMac’s products. The bushings deflect less for reduced wander with the added plus of increased range of adjustment that so many of our old heaps need.
Jay’s car has reduced road noise for it as well which seems counterintuitive.

 

if all the attributes of the original car could be there but with improved safety / handling Merc would be have done it....

is the compromise of spending all the money worth it - time will tell, but again the manu aren't total bafoons its highly likely they'd have done it already

a certain episode of top gear springs to mind they spent $15,000 on go faster wheels brakes and suspension - had it set up by professionals and lapped the circuit slower each change they made.... in the end making a pile of poo that was far worse, with horrible ride comfort and slower to drive

 

I don't quite understand your post. If the camber is changed in front, you either need to move both lower control arms or the wishbone on top. My car does not have anything like what you are showing. I need more explanation here.

 

You give MB too much credit.

KMac’s bushings are not unreasonable in cost.

Top Gear.... speaking of bafoons!

Try it Botus. Report back with how it goes. I will be giving my 222 car KMac’s bushings. Then an alignment.

 

I'm sure if one has a Lotus suspension engineer (sadly should be a few wanting job) and NVH criteria Merc asked their guys to deliver could be parked - under certain situations you could make some big feel / handling changes that helps a skilled driver enjoy the car more (to the significant detriment of other attributes). That's not rocket science, it just which compromises we allow. Roughly Merc spend $5 billion dollars on each new model's development cycle and in the old days, around 5 years of dev and 2 years testing on the road.

What you propose is in 5 mins with some tyre wearing changes, you can improve the entire set up Merc's experts spent 3 years designing and testing on the car (that in itself was a fall over of the last 25 years suspension tech and design philosophy Merc spent multiple Billions developing). That's not actually possible!

The other element, tweaking some bushing may lead to instability in certain high load conditions that many drivers can't cope with - and really one should go back to Merc and have them assess if the changes need a tweak to their ESP programming.... which is never going to happen

FYI find the episode it was the stig going slower after each change !

 

the bolt hole on the front subframe - inner end - where the lower track control arm is mounted on the car looks like the lower of these three pictures... the one with the dotted arm, now substitute either of the two (example) alternate mountings above it

so you lengthen (more neg camber) or shorten (reduce camber - head positive top of the wheel leaning outwards) the start point of where the arm bolts on the car

the Std big round bolt sits mid way held in that little star pattern (and delivers the settings you measured which must have been their aim on the right side of the car - as mine was like this 6 years before your car was even built).
ONLY to allow techs to notice this particular car had adjustment they use the strange weaker bolt and the funny washers to hold it in the new location...

But as we are only after a one time fix we don't need people playing ever again. So we can retain the bigger stronger round bolt and save a few pence - just remove the lugs on the subframe for the one time direction change we want to give the mounting bolt... and use just the funny washers to ensure the bolt never moves... When I bought mine from an old world once best in UK Merc dealership they explained they ONLY do what I propose here and NEVER use the silly bolts..... indeed they had the washers in stock.

NOTE doing so will send tracking way off - and will need to be fixed

 

I replaced the lower load bearing control arms on my car and did not observe any kind of a hole you show in your post. You mean it is the forward lower control arms?

 

Man

This is confusing as hell. You are the #1 person badmouthing about Mercedes how they on purpose build the cars to fail and this suspension is the thing they got right?

Today I drove my car 460 miles and about 160 miles was in east Texas going 79 mph on two-lane highway that was in pretty rough condition with all sorts of bumps and road imperfections. My car with the K-Mac bushings behaved just perfectly. With the original bushings I’m not sure I could have driven that speed.

Sure there were some rocking on the car but the big huge difference is that my car’s rear does not want to “side jump” that was the biggest problem for handling with the original bushings. On wet roads that made it scary to drive and forced to slow down big time even with brand new tires.

Tire wear is all separate from handling but I know with these bushings I get both right.

Again, back to my previous post. Perhaps these handling issues could be taken care of by replacing the old softened original rubber bushings with the OEM parts, but that will not fix the tire wear issue.

Absolutely amazing improvement in how the rear of my car behaves, really unbelievable improvement.

Would just need a stiffer sway bar to make it a race car…

 

its not meant to be confusing - what I'm trying to get across is manufacturers use huge resources to deliver the car you buy (when new). Including years of understanding and development to bring all the attributes around Noise Vibration Harshness (NVH) control and passive steer characteristics for safety, all built into the suspension design.

Merc manage this to a far higher degree then most (I expect BMW try harder, and Lotus actually understands it all properly), but in the middle of all that skill, engineering, and compromise the world is now very different.

The accountants ask for 10% saving for each new generations development cycle
The HR dept believe Suspension Engineers and the Latte drinking LGBTQ wasters getting away with checking their social media accounts for 8 hrs a day, have the exact same skill set.
The world of who can afford to buy the new models has transformed in the last thirty years. With China and India bringing a different outlook, and their genetics and beliefs bring different capabilities behind the wheel.
Meanwhile in Europe and North America snowflakes and millennial halfwits the deep state has created across most of the western world over the last 50 years, all mean suddenly car suspension, alongside old world ride and safety requirements must cope with ambivalent driving skills, and how to stay on the road factoring 80% of drivers are texting and not looking where they are going one second, and shortly after their inputs replicate a drug fuelled psychotic gamer.

Of course none of it really matters any more because goole and the deep state spent the last the last 15 years deliberately mandating gridlock on what we used to call roads and are still working on removing the freedom to use them...

 

Just an update after driving with the K-Mac bushes for about 3000 miles.

The car feels like any other car on the road. Before K-Mac I replaced the bushes in the hub end of the control arm, which already made a big improvement, but the K-Mac bushed brought it home.

I did not get the K-Mac bushed for the rear side jump problem. It was for adjusting the Camber to fix the tire inside edge wear issue which it did, but these bushes fixed both problems.

My car feels like glued on the road now going fast on bumpy East Texas 2-lane highways when before K-Mac bushes it was scary to do it.

Absolutely recommend getting these bushes for the W221 cars, absolutely I do!

 

can you please elaborate on this? Thanks

 

MB's (cheesy) method of allowing (precious little) adjustment of Camber via installing bolts that will allow the arm to be longer or shorter depending on how installed.

I much prefer K-Mac's solution of eccentric bushings. Bigger range of adjustment. A LOT more effort but all who have installed and had an alignment done by a competent tech are thrilled with results.