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The length of material on the front wheel hubs on my 1997 SL500 (with 5mm spacers) that I absolutely need and cannot eliminate does not protrude long enough to engage into the wheel bores of my aftermarket wheels that have a 66.6 inner ID.
Those 5mm are just enough to only expose the tapered section of the hub which is less than 66.6 in diameter - which results in the wheels not centering properly.
With the wheels on, and the bolts in loosely you can move the wheel up & down slightly and you should not be able to.
If I could get my hands on a set of hubs that have slightly longer lips than stock I'd be all set.
Do any of you experts & gurus know of such an animal?
Is anybody out there selling aftermarket wheel hubs that have a slightly longer cylindrical hub section, or are even all of the aftermarket parts pretty much the same dimensions as stock.
You might try incrementally tightening the bolts in a cross-hatch pattern. The wheel WILL center in the bolts if tightened sequentially a little at a time.
Do not try changing the hub. Change the wheels back to Mercedes-compatible.
I actually found a set of 8mm and 10mm spacers that had enough of a lip to engage into the inner bore of my wheels and the vibration issue is gone.
I had a slight tremor due to flat spots because the car has been sitting for so long but once I started driving it even the tremors went away, now she's as smooth as glass......with the aftermarket wheels.
If they are the original OEM lug bolts, the R12 ball seat might be too small for your aftermarket wheels and aren't seating fully/properly.
I know you said the issue was resolved - however, I would at least look into it and see if you need some hybrid lug bolts - M12 shank with an R14 ball seat.
This is the issue I ran into mounting wheels from an R230 to my R129. Mercedes went to an M14 shank after our R129s.
Excellent point but I made sure that I used ball seat lug bolts.
Actually each set of spacers that I bought (and I have many) came with a set of ball seat lug bolts that the manufacturer said were purposely designed for Mercedes wheels.
When I did a test fit of the old lug bolts vs. the new ones the fit was identical in both the original wheels and the aftermarket wheels.
The shop that performed the 4 wheel alignment did a lot of testing and found that the reason why I was getting a vibration up front was because (even though the spacers were only 7mm thick) they were the flat type with no lip, and the remaining exposed lip from the hub was not long enough to fully engage into the inner bore of the wheels so that they could center properly.
That's why I was in here asking folks if anybody knew of either longer lipped hubs or 8 to 10mm spacer's that had the 66.6 ID to 66.6 OD configuration.
I eventually found some on my own and like I wrote earlier, it's all settled now and she rides very smooth with no vibrations.
Thanks for the replies though, all good info to carry into the future.....
I guess the point I was making was not the fact you used 'ball seat lug bolts' - but to use the correct SIZE of ball seat. As in R12 vs R14.
You wheels won't ever mount properly/securely/safely with too small of a ball seat. Our R129 OEM wheels use lug bolts with M12 shanks with R12 ball seats. I was just wondering if your new wheels were designed for M14 shanks and R14 ball seats like post-2000 Mercedes.
Just a thought.
Sounds like you're happy with your current setup, though.
But what's nice about the info from these replies is that I get a bunch of useful information and I usually copy/paste them onto a running document that I keep for future reference.
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