Hello everyone,
I am new to this forum and very excited to be here, I am a Mercedes lover and I think its the best car around. I have owned many Mercedes in the past, I am stumped at the current problem I am having. I have a 2004 Mercedes S430 with 89k miles alabaster white with AMG package and 18' original AMG wheels. I noticed a vibration at 60mph and over after i release the gas not when accelerating. I have changed lower control arm, bushing, sway bar link, transmission mount, cheked engine mount and mercedes specialist said they are in good shape, had the tires road force balance, the vibration still there, the mechanic sugested to have the tires balance at high speed with wheels on the car. While doing the high speed balance on the front wheels (the rear could't do it becouse the car has independent traction and the specialist was affraid to do it but did it on the machine) the car was vibrating till the point you could see, after adding the weights there was no visual vibration anymore. I got in the car and start driving on the freeway and same vibration is there, the front passanger seat is vibrating as well. I stoped at my mechanic to explain him that high speed balance didn't do it and what is next? Checked the tires they are in good shape, ball joints good shape, bushings good shape. Now my mechanic tells me that the drive shaft could be out of balance and there is no way to check that than to take it out and send it to do a balance on it. The place he whats to send it is Wenco wich is located in Van Nuys California. Does anybody know about this place?
I'm also afraid that maybe the drve shaft is ok and if we take it down we won't be able to put it in the same place as original.
Please, any info would be appreciated.
Thank you
P.S. in the past I had a 2002 S430 with same problem and could never fix and a 2000 CL500 with same issue never fix

 

mark your points before taking off. usually a light colored marker, or chalk works. Where it connects to transmission mark it with a line that overlaps the connection point. And same thing for the other pieces.

Be careful and try to use something that do not rub off easy.

Now if they have to rebalance the driveline anyways, then the marks will become moot.



dont worry driveline vibrations are a pain the butt to track down and many euros have it as do after a while as well as many americans. Usually in american cars, no one bother to fix it as they consider a "ford" 3 years old as an aging car and "suppose" to be "falling apart". In euros 3-5 years is a warm up and things are not "suppose" to fall apart.

I'm not sure what the problem is at this point as back in the day a tell tell sign of a driveline out of balance such as tranny mount of drive shaft imabalance was distinct shaking in the shifter. Now and days the stick is not connected directly to the tranny.

I nthe case the driveline has to be removed, mark it's original position before removal.

 

Thank you BlackWolf, I will tell to my mechanic to mark the points

 

I had the same problem in my 02 clk 430. The vibration just wouldnt stop. I changed everything man from tires to laser balance to engine and transmission mounts. I finally found the problem. Bent rims man. One rim slightly bent will give you that problem for sure. believe that. I even had all of the rims taken off the car and the bends taken out of them. It almost gave me the perfect ride back. I think one of the rims was still slightly bent and couldnt be straightened out 100%. On a ford you would never feel that. But not on a Mercedes man. So after all of that, and going insane I gave in and bought new rims to make sure that was the problem. Now I got new rims and it feels like I just rolled off the lot.now I can go back to driving my usual 120 on the freeway!Check those rims dog!