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Shock absorbers part numbers problem - help needed urgently!

MercC350Coupe2011

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Joined
Sep 4, 2020
Messages
99
Location
United Kingdom
Car
Mercedes C350 coupe AMG sport 2dr 2011
Hello everyone. I am in a weird situation and I don't know what my next steps should be.

I have got a Mercedes C350 petrol coupe 2011 (reg number GN11OFD and vin number WDD2043572F731254. The car has 96k so I decided to change all four shock absorbers to give a refresh in ride and handling behaviour.

I have checked with Mercedes and Autodoc for the correct part numbers by giving them the vin number and of course verify that we are talking about the same model and all the details. I have decided to go with Bilstein and I have got A2043233000 fronts and A2043260600 rears.

We have put them in the car and everything seemed to be ok. When we tried to adjust the geometry we realised that the front camber was way off in both sides. Not just a little bit but so much that the only reason for that was to not have the correct shocks. I checked the mercedes front shocks part numbers that we took out and surprisingly they have got a different number (A2043202766). I have searched a bit for those and I found out that these are for the saloon w204 and not for the c204 i have got. However I don't believe they made a mistake in the factory!

I call Mercedes dealer to see if we have made a mistake with the part numbers. Mercedes verify that the new part numbers are correct but the factory mercedes front shocks are not for my car!! Here I realised that something really dodgy is going on. Just to be clear here the rear chocks give correct geometry and the old and new parts have the same numbers.

I start calling different Mercedes dealers and they all say that the new ones are the correct but the factory shocks are not for my vehicle! How is it possible that the shocks fitted from Mercedes in the factory are not for my vehicle? I have verified many times to clarify that we are talking for the same vehicle. All agreed that the old factory shocks are not correct for this vehicle and the new ones are the correct fit. However, the old factory shocks give correct camber angles and the new ones completely off.

What do you propose to me to do? Mercedes dealers keep saying that the old factory front shocks are not for my vehicle. This doesn't make any sense. I believe that the car had correct shocks from the factory (that's why it gives proper camber angles) ands something is going on with their part number systems.

Ps Bilstein won't accept refunding the dampers since they were fitted in a car. So it is not an option to keep buying sets of front shocks until I find the correct fit. On top of that I don't want to pay lots of money for keep swapping shocks until we find the correct ones.
 
Unfortunately, I think you are going to have to go off the part number on the old shocks, and buy new.
List the unused but fitted Bilsteins on here; someone might take them off you straight away for a suitable discount to get some of your money back.

Whenever I'm working on my car, despite what Merc parts catalogue states, if I can, I always try to physically check the part number on the vehicle for this very reason.
It's not unknown for the Merc system to be wrong, especially around facelifts and dates when part changes were made.

When I've done shocks and springs myself, I've been in the fortunate position of having access to another car, so I do one side at a time, so I can fit the new part and check, then order the other side if it's okay.

Anything to do with aircon systems are another massive minefield like this!
 
Unfortunately, I think you are going to have to go off the part number on the old shocks, and buy new.
List the unused but fitted Bilsteins on here; someone might take them off you straight away for a suitable discount to get some of your money back.

Whenever I'm working on my car, despite what Merc parts catalogue states, if I can, I always try to physically check the part number on the vehicle for this very reason.
It's not unknown for the Merc system to be wrong, especially around facelifts and dates when part changes were made.

When I've done shocks and springs myself, I've been in the fortunate position of having access to another car, so I do one side at a time, so I can fit the new part and check, then order the other side if it's okay.

Anything to do with aircon systems are another massive minefield like this!
I believe this is the reason as well. What happened is that the mercedes factory shocks are of course correct and they made a mistake in the parts catalogue. And you are very right. My car is a facelift and amg package sports suspension which is very rare and slightly lowered compared to the saloon. The shocks I have bought they are probably for the saloon version which explains why the camber is so far off.
 
I find this curious. Shocks aren't a fixed length so how do they throw the camber out? If you had changed the springs, yes, as they set the ride height.
 
OP . have you checked the bolt going through the arm is in the correct position for camber on your car . I can not see how a shock absorber can change the camber (unless the length is alarmingly and obviously different to the one that was removed) The spring holds the car up , not the shocks.

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PS : I once had a brand new Vauxhall Omega delivered to to home with the wrong alloy wheels fitted from the factory. Months later when they were replaced the dealer said there was a 'supply problem' on the production line so they kept the line running by fitting wheels from CD models on to CDX models .

One would hope MB did not have the same issue with your car and its shock struts.
 
Coming back to the issue I have got a lot of updates. After spending a lot of hours and calling many people and asking around I have found interesting facts and finally I believe the problem is in the alignement machine of the garage which was bought a week ago! Let me explain...

First things first the new shocks seem to be correct and the original mercedes shocks are the same as well. The originals have got a different number because Mercedes in the factory gives a different code for the whole strut assembly. So in MB dealer they told me that the number in the original shocks is not for the part itself but for the whole assembly. So both the new and the old front shocks are correct. No parts problem then. One less problem to worry about.

In our effort to understand what is going on, we put back in the old shocks in all corners! And to our surprise we had the same issue with the camber values! I am saying to our surprise because I have done plenty of alignments over the years( changed tyres, controls arms etc. )and there was never such a problem. However, the previous alignements were done in another place not in this one. Furthermore, they told that they bought the machine just a week ago which added to my suspicion about it.

Finally I searched to find the old alignment reports to see what is going on. And here is the interesting point. According to the old alignment reports the target/factory values for the camber angles are very different to the ones that their new machine gives!! Just to make it more simple the alignement machine of another garage says that for the front cambers the facroty value is -0.5. Their "new" machine (is a second hand actually) says that -1.5 degrees is the correct value for the camber angle. So definately one of the two alignement machines doesn't have the correct factory settings for my car!!

My question is does anyone know the correct factory values for my car before I go back and tell them that it was their mistake and they messed up everything because their machine didn't have stored the correct factory alignement settings?

Ps It is quite possible that their alignment machine didn't have mine in their database and it picked the closest one which is not the same! What a mess!!
 
Well still I haven't sorted it out. I still have the old shock absorbers and I want to be 100% before I go back and request the new shocks back in.

This is the reason I am asking for the default/factory alignment values. Does anyone have an old alignement report for the C204 M276 V6 petrol coupe ?
 
OP , when I took my car to a local place that happened to have a Hunter machine the young bloke operating it had never seen a C55 AMG before (he has probably not seen one since !)

I was very impressed with him when is spent a lot of time making sure he had the correct setting data for the car and did not just enter ' W203 C class ' .

He got the job done and all was well......until the printer failed ! But I was suitably impressed by his attention to detail.

I hope you get this sorted soon . best of luck and keep us informed.
 
Finally after a lot of searching and a lot of help from the local Mercedes dealer the problem was found!!!

The car is ok and the parts are also correct.

The problem arises from the alignement machine of the garage! They picked the wrong car from their database so the alignement settings were not correct for my car. The machine had 3 options for the mercedes c class coupe (with specific suspension codes) and they picked one without cross checking the correct code. After talking to Mercedes I verified that the suspension is called sports suspension with advanced agility and it has a code 486. They previously used the suspension with code 84 with is sports suspension but as it seems with different alignment settings. By the way I had done an alignement to a another workshop and they had used the suspension code 485 which again is not for my car (it is the third option). How is it possible that they pick an option manually and not taking the alignement details automatically with the vin number? This is like asking for a lot of trouble and I was not expecting that from professional garages!

Al least in the end the root cause was found because I was going nuts. I hope this thread to help someone in the future with simlar issues. Be careful what car you select on the alignement machine. A similar one doesn't necessary mean the same alignement settings!
 

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