w124 / E500E Hub Size

[Jlaa]

Regarding thay front end shimmy on R129 or W124 500E/E500, I came to the conclusion it's 99% tires and nothing else. Just get the newest tires possible and you will be done with it. If not, they are likely not new enough.

I've been chasing vibration on 37,000km R129 and tires cured it to an unnoticable level, but it's not possible to eliminate it completely. It's within chassis/front end design, sadly.

I had very bad shaking on 500E and the amplitude was changing if I ran different sets of wheels.
Moreover! we had a big debate of whether 0.2 mm play can cause the vibration, lol. It's funny, that 500E has 66.4 mm hub diameter, unlike later 66.5 hubs, so 500E needs 66.5mm center bore wheels instead of 66.6 mm bore that worked later on. Sounds wacky, but it's true, I couldn't put 66.5 mm wheels on 66.5 mm hubs when I tried to change wheels between cars. And so, the debate, can we gain the 0.02 mm somehow? I was asked. "Well, we can wrap around the hub some scotch band?? but that's ridiculous and should not change anything". However! Despite me doing all that under pressure, lol, I admit it did reduce the front end vibration to about 30% less. Which is though funny looking when you wrap around a transparent scotch band around the hub, but effective.

I believe, new tires should get it to a minor level.
FYI, the car had 170,000 km. I adjusted front bearings, but made no sense, maybe they should have been changed as well.

@whatever are you saying you used 66.6mm bore wheels on the E500E 66.4mm hubs with scotch tape to make up the 0.1m-0.2mm difference?
Out of curiosity - what wheels were you using?

Never heard that before. The 500E hub is an R129 item and I have swapped wheels around from various Mercedes models and never encountered this.

Same here. Makes me wonder if either the hub, and/or a particular set of wheels, was either out of spec or was worn. 0.1mm is tiny! As a reference, spark plug gap is 0.8mm.

Also IIRC, the MB spec for wheel+tire runout combined is 2.0mm?

Actually gentlemen, they were experimenting with a number of wheel/hub concentricity measures throughout that era. All of these situations are possible.

Great. Now I need to go measure all my wheels + hubs. Thanks a lot, Klink! LOL...

Hi @gsxr did you ever measure any of your wheels/hubs? I guess I'll put mine up here for posterity. Since my car is sitting on jackstands waiting for wheels, I measured the hubs. Look like my car has hubs between 66.38mm and 66.44mm in size.



Also just for kicks I measured the front hub radial runout. Front Left was 0.025mm and Front Right was 0.03mm.



EDIT - I measured rear hub radial runout as well. Rear Left was 0.075mm and Rear Right was 0.06mm.

 

[dionphaneuf]

I wonder if the hubs are 66.4 +/- 0.05 and the bores on wheels are 66.6 (eek) +/- 0.05 to give some ever so minor clearance and tolerance for differential expansion, etc.