I have been fighting my dealer for 10 months now on an incredibly loose steering issue which they refuse to admit to. I have a 2001 E55 with only 32K miles on it. They said that all the play in the wheel is due to age of the vehicle. But they have yet to address why my car seems to find its way into the lane next to me even though my wheel is centered. The car has significant understeer in corning, drifts aimlessly even on straight roads (not torque steer or tracking the road), and feels essentially like driving with marshmellows for a front-end. You can get 45 degrees of play in the wheel and have no effect on the direction of the car. It's like driving a 747 and not a sport-sedan. I drove my friends 2001 BMW M5 which has 50K miles on it and it's tighter than this. I also drove a 2001 E55 with about 50K miles on it and although there was significant play in the wheel, it was a lot tighter responsiveness than mine was.

So, I had the original Pilot Sports on there and didn't notice it. It was about half-way through the life cycle of my second set of tires (which happened to be S-03 Pole Positions) when I noticed all of this coming togther. The dealer said, after about 6 trips and two months total in the shop) that they could not find a steering or suspension problem and that it had to be my tires. However, even though they "said" they couldn't find a problem, they have had to re-seat my sway-bar three times and replaced control arm bushings just about 5 months ago.

So I went out and bought all brand new Pilot Sports a few weeks ago and guess what! The problem is worse than before. So I went back to Mercedes and got the local MB guy to come to the dealership for a test drive. He said he could swap out the steering rack and see if that fixes the problem, but there is no guarantee.

Any suggestions? I am at my wits end with this car and want to throw it back in their face and stick with my Porsche.

 

to eliminate the tires from the equation put about 40 psi in them and see what the car does then .....