Mercedes E230 spare wheels.

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Tue 30 Jan 2001 12:06
Mercedes E230 spare wheels. - tristan chaize
A friend has an E230 estate P registration with steel wheels. His nanny was insured to drive it. She had a rear puncture and changed the wheel leaving the wheel trim in the boot. As she tried to drive off, the bolts damaged the brakes because they are too long UNLESS you replace the trim which is held on by them and acts as a washer. It does warn of this in the manual, and I know that Honest John says "always read the manual", but is everyone who borrows a car expected to read the manual too? I call this bad design. It gets worse. The same applies to the same car when fitted with factory alloys. Mercedes only supply a steel spare, which is thinner than the alloys. Fitting the steel spare using the same bolts also damages the brakes because they are now too long. Again this is covered in the handbook, and shorter bolts are supplied. But really! Please warn all Mercedes owners of this obvious design fault.
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Tue 30 Jan 2001 18:33
RE: Mercedes E230 spare wheels. - honestjohn
What has been said here is correct and I have warned about it twice before in the column. The warning should also have found its way into at least one of my books. But I can't keep on repeating the same warnings or the column would be just one big repeated warning - and very boring.

HJ
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