Greetings:

I have a '95 E320 I upgraded to AMG replica 17" alloys, with 215/45/17 Khumo tires. I was a little worried about the offset when I bought them, but I was assured by Adsit that the wheels and tires would work fine on the car. I am not especially pleased with the way they fit in the front, they protrude more than I would like and look like the front needs 500E flares. I can live with that. But the clearance problem I'm having is in the REAR. With the car loaded with weight in the rear the tires sound like they are hitting the fender lips going over big dips at speed. So far there is no visible damage to the tires, and not even any rubber residue on the fender lip, so they must be barely scraping. I figure if I can make some slight adjustments I can prevent this from happening. I had this problem with a VW Jetta many years ago and simply put a spring spacer in the coils and it fixed it, but obviously that isn't an option with the hydraulic suspension. Any ideas on how I can adjust the ride height or make the suspension bottom out sooner to avoid this situation?

 

Hi there,

I'm new at this forum a just saw your posting . I'm curious on how to lower the rear on the E320 wagon since it has the SLS. I had lowering springs installed but of course the height of the rear is still the same as the stock height my car looks like a hot rod How do you by-pass the SLS? Thanks!

 

I found this thread that has a lot of info, looks like the rear height adjusters can be manupulated. There are a couple posts here that claim there is no way to get rid of the hyd suspension, and some warnings against it.

I haven't tried anything on mine yet. Right now it's running on 5 cyl and I think I have a bad coil pack, will try to get that corrected this week sometime.

 

Adsit will tell you just about anything to get you to buy. I was told their 7" x 15" wheel would fit just fine on my 1990 300SE. Like a dope, I believed them. Once the wheels had tires on them and were mounted, it was evident that there were flex and resulting fitment issues. It is also too late at that point, according to their policies, for them to accept their POS wheels back. Stick to OE & OEM whenever possible or likely it'll be stuck to you.

 

The factory CD I bought for my 300TE has specific instructions for upgrading to larger/later wheels on my car (1992). The recommendation for factory larger wheels was to roll the lip more on the fenders to gain clearance for the larger wheels. The 1/2 inch or so protruding into the wheelwell is flattened up to the fender more in the pics I saw in the uppermost of the wheel arch. If it is as slight as you say it should be an easy fix. I wish I could upload the pdf, but worry about copyright issues, and the advice may not be specific to your car. Hope this helps. BTW, I am a newbie here .