Suspension mods for better tire wear
 

Hey Everyone.

Ive been very happy with my MY14 E63 Wagon.
One thing ive been less than excited about is the insane inner tire wear that you get on these cars, im replacing summers every 6 months, corded 2 times!
The sad thing is the rest of the tire is totally fine, if i was a bandit on the roads id be ok with this, but most of my driving is highways.

Anyway, long story short. Im looking for some advice with regards to fixing this issue. Suggestions for alignment mods and/or alignment settings.

My local dealer basically shrugs and says, yup thats normal. I own a few other fast cars, that wear less aggressively after 4-5 track days than this car does over a summer of cruising.

Ive heard of the K-mac bushings, but im looking for options if there are any others!

Thanks everyone.

I'd have an alignment shop look into TOE settings.

Tell your dealer to stop shrugging and align your car properly.

You say 6 months, how many miles is this? Mileage will help indicated tire wear issues better than time will.

I agree, mileage would determine tire wear instead of time, but, OP says "the rest of the tire is totally fine". THAT is NOT normal. Even at -3 degrees of camber you won't be seeing wires showing on the inside of the tire and "the rest of the tire is fine". Toe NOT set at Zero on the other hand...

Agreed with you all, trust me, my dealership and I are not friends. They are not the best at dealing with customers I gave up trying to get them to align my car, as they actively refused to and kept insisting it was normal wear.

Ive since found a shop that does old school but more involved string alignments, the guy there said he will zero it out. Same guy works on Porsche cup cars, so I trust he knows his stuff.

Mileage wise maybe 10K miles...but yeah, the rest of the tire had wear, but not even close to the bars. If I didn't swap tires for winter, and just checked the outside, id never known.

Dealer kept saying theres no real adjustment (hence the thread here, wanted to know how far I gotta go to get this sorted out), then told me to buy tires. I asked about supplying my own, nope they wouldn't mount if it wasn't from them lol.

Is this for fronts or rears?

Basically the problem is slightly different - we want a 4,500 lbs sedan to behave like a 2000 lbs sport scar, That requires a lot of negative camber. Which wears the inside edges of the tire. Worst case, hard driving on abrasive surface (not sure where you are based but if you are in southern states there is concrete highways of course, think on ramps under acceleration and turning).

I do agree with the people above - if there is excessive toe the problem gets worse.

I would probably go to an independent alignment shop. Find the local high end, independent car mechanic shop. ask where they do alignments. Go there. Alignment is not rocket science, but a bit of an art.

I was told that this helps substantially and am considering giving it a try? Any suggestions?

https://m.ebay.com/itm/Mercedes-Rear...0AAOSwIjJZPO-f

Tired for premature inner tire wear. These tires aren't cheap to replace every 3-4k miles.

I think you should consult with an indy shop that is good at alignments before you spend $ on parts. If your car hasn't been lowered and the suspension is stock.... I don't see why you'd have to add adjustable arms... that doesn't make sense. Specially if your tires are getting wrecked in less than 5K miles and you are driving normally.

Yes, i did lowered my E63 with 20" aftermarket wheels and plan on going to 22" and lowering module for my MY17 S63 and from my local alignment shop that the toe and camber kit will help with the premature tire wear, because its adjustable vs stock not adjustable. This is how I under it. Been paying too much for tires with minimal highway pulls.

I see, Well, this is a different scenario. I dunno about any of these kits, but if you are gonna go with 20s" and dropped, it may come down to having to get adjustable components for a ride height the stock suspension wasn't design to do (it'll depend on how low you wanna go). Slapping on the kit won't automatically help your tire wear but will allow for alignment setting outside the boundaries of the stock components. GL with the mods! And don't forget to post pics of the end result!

Thanks. See if anyone here has experiences or knowledge can chime in?

The moment you insert aftermarket bits into the suspension equation, MB and the dealer can and will walk away from your problem.

Make them fix it.

I got about 25K miles out of my first set of tires.

Mainly my fronts, the rears, while are wearing very much so with an inside bias, are not AS bad, not great tho.

Ive talked to the indy shop, they will take about an hour to set it all up and zero out my toe all around. With how i use this car, Im happy to sacrifice the turn-in for the maybe....10 corners I have on any one drive I do. 99% of which are intersections...The car feels setup to make it handle like a more nimble car, If i lived somewhere fun to drive on the street, id be all over it. but with the endless straight roads and 90 degree intersections, the most interesting thing I get is the blast on to the on/off ramps.

Headed over to the dealer this afternoon to look at the rears on the 16 E63s wagon. OEM Pirellis I could swear were replaced before we bought it CPO; so they'd have about 9k miles on them now, max. I'll try to get pictures, but I'm struggling to accept this is "normal" for these cars. We had our local dealer align it at 15k mi not long after we got it, within 1k miles for sure. 8k mi later - to the cords on the inside of the rears. Really interested to see tread depth at the outer most groove.

I get this is a sports/performance ride and tires ain't cheap, but I don't want to buy them unnecessarily if the alignment is off. There seems to be a debate here about what, if anything, can be done about rear camber on the rack (nothing?). I also recall reading here maybe that with the E63s you have to align in a particular mode? Sport or Sport+ maybe? Can anyone shed any light on that? thanks!

I am tempted to start a new thread on this but there are so many already. I went over to the dealership and took a look. Best I can tell based on the vehicle history report, these rear OEM Pirelli P-zeros were installed at 10,550 miles; car has 23,400 now - so we're talking roughly 13,000 miles. Left rear - belts on the inside edge showing through. 3/32" depth at the outer groove. Right rear, belts inside, 5/32" outside. That seems like excessive inner tire wear to me! Also both rears and right front wheels bent, will be fixed under warranty. They suggested part of this could be from the bent wheels . . . eh . . . I'd expect chop but I'm no expert.

LR Belts coming through;
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...f1e785a327.jpg

LR, to the belts
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...bc3634c2a5.jpg

RR, Does this look like normal wear for these cars?
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...d6e2bb33ab.jpg

RR wear
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...013eb3680d.jpg

LR profile - that's a lot of inside wear!
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...86d6f9f87a.jpg

Experts, does this look like camber wear, toe wear, or possibly worn suspension components? Combo? They also aligned this car at 15k miles - so it's entirely possible we got the majority of this inner wear from 10,550 to 15k. I've also scanned and attached the printout from the 15k alignment. That rear camber looks OK, to me, but then again I can't find the exact specs for the 2016 E63s Wagon - if anyone has, please share. Now I need to figure out - do I go Michelin's all around from the tire store with the tread wear replacement warranty or 2 more rear Pirelli P-Zeros until I sort out the problem. Fronts are pretty good, almost new due to wheel & tire damage warranty replacements.

And - the problem - do I need to throw parts at this? UPD looks better than K-Mac to me but do we need it? What about air pressure and a toe in adjustment? What would I have them set it to?

Alignment Specs at 15k
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...845db95cd2.jpg

Glad (not really) to see i not the only one.

My alignment guys said there was hardly any toe not enough to ruin tires so fast, and that this is fundamentally a camber issue, I was looking at the K-MAC kit, but things came up and just replaced my tires and went along. Im sure they are getting screwed as I drive.

It makes little sense how this is normal to dealers, Ive had the alignment verified by 3 places, all of them have said its too much camber.

UPD arms look good, but I DD my wagon all year, and live in the rust belt, so those nice rose joints will die a fast death, gotta stick to rubber bushings.

Well, I feel your pain PGE63. I'm going to talk to our local perf shop that's done a few things for me over the years and see what they have to say about it. From all my reading this evening, this is common on these and the BMWs. I just can't accept this is "normal". Design flaw, OK. We're not even having a lot of fun - this is my wife's DD.

Post up what they say, the guys I spoke with said its bushings or bust.

Coming from other AWD platforms, Ive run way more aggressive camber numbers than this with very progressive wear, im guessing the fact these things are rolling barges weight wise sitting on the edge of that rubber probably isnt helping anything.

The more I research this (ok obsess over it) - I think this is toe in (or lack thereof) wear. Camber should really push the wear further toward the center line of the tire (I think, again, not an expert). Would love to hear what others have done with toe in, measurements - to combat this problem. Spec toe in isn't getting it done (assuming I'm even in spec, which is questionable).

I have Zeroed my toe, which was in by a minuscule amount, still got that wear. Toe would wear for sure, but this wear is almost riding on the sidewalls, toe wouldnt do that at such a small deg. this really to me seems like camber + weight.