W210 E300 heavy front tyre wear

[Parrot of Doom]

The front tyres need replacing on my E300 DT, most of the wear is on the insides. I can also feel a faint knocking from the front when driving over rough roads.

I'm guessing that the likely culprit is the bushes on the front suspension, which I'm told is a common fault on these cars. The mileage is 165000, the car was first registered in 1997.

Can anybody describe roughly where these bushes are (with a picture if possibly), how easy they are to replace, and if its a tough job how much would a good indie charge to do them?

/edit: Oh, and what speed rating should I get on the new tyres?

 

[Impaler]

It seems it has way too much negative camber.

 

[malcolm E53 AMG]

Sounds like you need to do some wheel alignment checks before starting to replace components. A good tyre fitting outfit should be able to do a wheel alignment check on all four wheels for around £20.

If this doesn't show any problems the most likely culprit is front ant-roll bar bushes which at 150K miles will need replacing if they already haven't been.

The knocking you mention does require investigation especially if its a steering ball joint, any competent mechanic can check this for you.

Having done all this it may be time to investgate the condition of the suspension arm bushes. Replacement will be quite costly though unless your prepared to do it yourself.

 

[Parrot of Doom]

What are the correct settings for this vehicle, in case the tyre fitters don't know?

 

[malcolm E53 AMG]

Shouldn't be a problem tell them the car details on the phone and their chart should do the rest. From experience the optical checks I've had done without a problem.

 

[dogsbody]

This is a perennial problem with "heavier engined" variants of most "luxury cars".
The heavier engine causes the bushes to wear quicker resulting in a camber change which can only be corrected by replacing the bushes.

Be thankful that you have got 165K miles, on some Bigger engined Beamers it starts at 65K

 

[Parrot of Doom]

Well it needs some glow plugs doing and some other bits and pieces, I'm taking her to a specialist in Salford soon, so I'll have him take her out and check her over thoroughly.

The garage I bought it from (average trader, not a dealer) is pathetic, I wouldn't trust them to change a wheel let alone anything important I'm just going to pay for the work myself, more for peace of mind than anything. If the bushes aren't too difficult (once I know where to look) I'll have a go at that myself.

 

[clive williams]

The front tyres need replacing on my E300 DT, most of the wear is on the insides. I can also feel a faint knocking from the front when driving over rough roads.

I'm guessing that the likely culprit is the bushes on the front suspension, which I'm told is a common fault on these cars. The mileage is 165000, the car was first registered in 1997.

Can anybody describe roughly where these bushes are (with a picture if possibly), how easy they are to replace, and if its a tough job how much would a good indie charge to do them?

/edit: Oh, and what speed rating should I get on the new tyres?

If the bushes are gone then you should have some other strange handling quirks.
One of the often missed causes is worn/soft front shockers, which would not be unreasonable on a 165k mls car. To explain, most modern suspensions toe out slightly and induce very heavy negative camber change on full bump and with soft shockers the effect is heightened with the increased speed of the spring reaction. It is remarkably difficult for most fitters to detect worn/soft shockers unless they are leaking and it is really only the experienced driver (or a bench mounted test rig) who can tell otherwise.
One of the other causes we have noted is if your journeys start and finish with manoeuvring into parking spaces that are at right angles to the road. The outside wheel will go acutely negative 5-10 deg and you can hear the scrubbing. There is no cure for this as its the suspension design. We have this problem but minimise it by using the high end of the tyre pressures and swapping the tyres front/back.
Finally, we have a E320CDI Estate and checking the tyre wear we don't appear to have the same problem.
On speed rating of tyres use V/W rating. Use the recommendation in the handbook as its not so much about speed it is construction that drove the manufacturers to choose the tyre.

Clive

500E
E320CDIT210

 

[clive williams]

Front bush wear

If the front bush wear is common on the 210 then we all need to approach Powerflex or Superflex bush suppliers; if they can't supply the items either as stock or universal fitting then they may be persuaded to manufacture them. They will probably be cheaper than MB originals and because they will be polyurethane they will last 5x longer and will not be affected by oils and greases. (Thought? is the problem with the bushes that they are in the line of fire of any oil that is floating around the engine compartment?)

Clive

500E
E320CDIT210

 

[Parrot of Doom]

I think it has new front springs, not sure about the shocks though. 165k miles - thats nearly all motorway use, I'd personally be surprised if shocks on an 8 year old car started to go at that point?

Theres definitely something loose under there though, could feel a dull tapping driving around today. Could just be something not even related to the suspension I suppose, but I'll find out soon enough

 

[Parrot of Doom]

Hmmm, put new front tyres on today and I noticed that the nearside front wheel has slight play in the bearing.

I wonder if this is the source of the problem, oh well its off to the specialist tomorrow so fingers crossed!

 

[turnipsock]

I don't think anti roll bar bushes would cause the tyres to wear on the inside. Likewise, shock absorbers.

It does sound like there is to much negative camber at the front. Weak or or broken springs, or the bushes on the wishbones.

 

[clive williams]

I don't think anti roll bar bushes would cause the tyres to wear on the inside. Likewise, shock absorbers.

It does sound like there is to much negative camber at the front. Weak or or broken springs, or the bushes on the wishbones.

Turnipsock,

I don't dispute that the problem involves excessive negative camber but the point I was trying to make about worn shockers was that it was possible for this camber to rear its head under dynamic loads and not just the measured static situation.

The worn shocker comment was as a result of spending 80k mls trying to get to the bottom of this particular wear characteristic on a Senator - springs and bushes were in excellent condition and the alignment (by laser) was spot on. It wasn't until travelling back from Germany (having picked up the 500E as a replacement for the Senator) that I was able to observe the Senator at speed. Whenever we came to a compression dip in the road the front of the car would go close to full compression with around 10-15 degs of negative camber. I also know that the front, in common with present philosophy toes out under compression to help stability under braking. My conclusion was that even under normal driving the front wheels turn outwards and change negative camber significantly under braking and cornering. This is exagerated by worn shockers, which cannot slow the rate of change to a less manageable level. That is why I noticed the wear characteristics getting progressively worse over the extended mileage.

It is an unfortunate fact that we all rarely have the opportunity to observe our cars perform from outside the vehicle and we are reliant on static checks to explain anomalies.

Clive

500E
E320CDIT210

 

[television]

I disagree with this statement of toe out, all cars have a 4-6 degree toe in. even under adverse conditions it never goes beyond 0 the car steering becomes dangerous near this point as the car would pull to the nearest camber.

Malcolm

 

[Parrot of Doom]

Just had the word back from the guy who is fixing it. Badly worn front ball joints, so they're being replaced now.

Also a few other problems which I knew about, hes done 5 glow plugs (no.2 is welded in!), and replaced a diesel spill pipe that was leaky.

 

[clive williams]

I disagree with this statement of toe out, all cars have a 4-6 degree toe in. even under adverse conditions it never goes beyond 0 the car steering becomes dangerous near this point as the car would pull to the nearest camber.

Malcolm

Malcolm, I hope your car doesn't have 4-6 deg of toe in. The tyre scrub would be horrific. For example the toe in quoted for both the W124 and 201 is 0 deg 20min ie 1/3 deg total ie 10min per side. There is also over 1 deg TOE OUT on full lock.

The toe in adjustment for the W210 is 0deg +/- 10min ie from parallel to +20min maximum.

Clive

500E
E320CDIT210

 

[television]

Malcolm, I hope your car doesn't have 4-6 deg of toe in. The tyre scrub would be horrific. For example the toe in quoted for both the W124 and 201 is 0 deg 20min ie 1/3 deg total ie 10min per side. There is also over 1 deg TOE OUT on full lock.

The toe in adjustment for the W210 is 0deg +/- 10min ie from parallel to +20min maximum.

Clive

500E
E320CDIT210

Clive, can we stop meeting like this, I omited the....point should have been
.04 /.06degrees.

Cheers
Malcolm

 

[clive williams]

The front tyres need replacing on my E300 DT, most of the wear is on the insides. I can also feel a faint knocking from the front when driving over rough roads.

I'm guessing that the likely culprit is the bushes on the front suspension, which I'm told is a common fault on these cars. The mileage is 165000, the car was first registered in 1997.

Can anybody describe roughly where these bushes are (with a picture if possibly), how easy they are to replace, and if its a tough job how much would a good indie charge to do them?

/edit: Oh, and what speed rating should I get on the new tyres?

Parrot,

Sorry to use your posted thread and I know you may have solved the problem but in researching some answers I came up with the following observations:

1) Changing the P6000s for winter tyres I asked for the front tyres back. One of them - I don't know which side it came from - had severe wear to the inside shoulder in part down to the canvas. The wear line is 45 deg to the tread on an area which you could not have reasonably expected wear even if the supension had collapsed??? It is however, the type of wear that I have been discussing in this thread.

2) According to the MB manual for my (2001)T210, the forward wishbone bush on the front is hydraulic!!!????, the rear plain rubber. The only reason I could see for this is to reduce the Noise, Vibration and Harshness. As the MB manual is written for fitters and not an engineering manual there is insufficient detail to describe it. This is another complex component and therefore must be susceptable to failure. How much NVH does it reduce?

Clive

500E
E320CDIT210 - much better for new rubber