Hi All,
After making good use of the wealth of information in these forums when I was choosing my car I thought I'd share my own recent experience - apologies if it goes on a bit!
About four weeks ago I became the owner of a MY2008 W211 320 Sport Saloon, which is my first venture into Mercedes ownership.
Overall I'm made up with the car but initially I was somewhat disappointed with it's road manner and general handling. It's the first car I've owned with such large diameter wheels/low profile tryes so I was expecting to get a bit more transmission of the road surface back through the steering than I was used to.
However, the car was very, very twitchy and I'll try to explain as best I can how it felt on the road:
- nervous and unsettled in the straight-ahead position.
- definite pull (not drift) to the left.
- uncommunicative when steering left or right, i.e. didn't load up evenly and was difficult to place accurately when going into a turn at speed.
- huge tendency to tramline, sometimes quite dramatically. For instance, when in lane 1 on certain motorways it was almost impossible to keep the car straight because of the ruts left by lorrys.
- I could also feel the back end moving around as much as the front.
After a full inspection at MBTech in Warrington confirmed that all was okay with the suspension (no play in bushes, etc.) I took the plunge and booked a session with Tony at Wheels-in-Motion - again after reading good reports on here. This was a slight leap of faith as it involved a 6hr/380 mile round trip!
On arrival I was impressed with the standard of the waiting area and the chap who greeted me at the desk was very polite and courteous. I'd arrived a little early but before too long my car was on the ramps and ready to be checked.
After the engineers had done their initial tests I was invited out to chat to Tony who explained very simply and clearly that some adjustments were out of tolerance and in his opinion there were definitely improvements to be made, including tweakage to minimise the pull-to-the-left "feature".
It took the team there (I think up to four of them were working on my car at one point) about an hour and a half to complete the work, which included fitting 3 x adjuster bolts to achieve the required adjustments. Tony then took the time to fully explain the changes he'd made and the effect he expected them to have - all in plain English and very easy to understand.
So, after all was done and I'd parted with £222 (which was as quoted so no surprise) I headed off back to the M40...and what a difference! I could literally tell that things had improved as I was driving away from their unit. The straight-ahead position was more positive and the pull to the left all but gone.
Once on the M40, the improvements were altogether more obvious. The car tracked straight and true and (obviously on a quiet stretch) I could let go of the steering wheel completely and the car didn't deviate off line for at least half a mile. All the twitchy-ness and nervousness was gone and the road manner and handling were spot-on.
After being initially worried that I'd bought a lemon I can honestly say that the work carried out by Tony has totally transformed the car and I'm more than happy with the level of service and the cost. Tony is a great guy who clearly knows what he's talking about and is passionate and enthusiastic about what he does - I'd recommend him and the services of WIM to anyone!
And as an added bonus a McLaren MP4-12C turned up for a set of summer boots, which was nice to have a nosey at!
Hope that's been helpful but feel free to ask if you want to know more.
Cheers
mrgibbs68
After making good use of the wealth of information in these forums when I was choosing my car I thought I'd share my own recent experience - apologies if it goes on a bit!
About four weeks ago I became the owner of a MY2008 W211 320 Sport Saloon, which is my first venture into Mercedes ownership.
Overall I'm made up with the car but initially I was somewhat disappointed with it's road manner and general handling. It's the first car I've owned with such large diameter wheels/low profile tryes so I was expecting to get a bit more transmission of the road surface back through the steering than I was used to.
However, the car was very, very twitchy and I'll try to explain as best I can how it felt on the road:
- nervous and unsettled in the straight-ahead position.
- definite pull (not drift) to the left.
- uncommunicative when steering left or right, i.e. didn't load up evenly and was difficult to place accurately when going into a turn at speed.
- huge tendency to tramline, sometimes quite dramatically. For instance, when in lane 1 on certain motorways it was almost impossible to keep the car straight because of the ruts left by lorrys.
- I could also feel the back end moving around as much as the front.
After a full inspection at MBTech in Warrington confirmed that all was okay with the suspension (no play in bushes, etc.) I took the plunge and booked a session with Tony at Wheels-in-Motion - again after reading good reports on here. This was a slight leap of faith as it involved a 6hr/380 mile round trip!
On arrival I was impressed with the standard of the waiting area and the chap who greeted me at the desk was very polite and courteous. I'd arrived a little early but before too long my car was on the ramps and ready to be checked.
After the engineers had done their initial tests I was invited out to chat to Tony who explained very simply and clearly that some adjustments were out of tolerance and in his opinion there were definitely improvements to be made, including tweakage to minimise the pull-to-the-left "feature".
It took the team there (I think up to four of them were working on my car at one point) about an hour and a half to complete the work, which included fitting 3 x adjuster bolts to achieve the required adjustments. Tony then took the time to fully explain the changes he'd made and the effect he expected them to have - all in plain English and very easy to understand.
So, after all was done and I'd parted with £222 (which was as quoted so no surprise) I headed off back to the M40...and what a difference! I could literally tell that things had improved as I was driving away from their unit. The straight-ahead position was more positive and the pull to the left all but gone.
Once on the M40, the improvements were altogether more obvious. The car tracked straight and true and (obviously on a quiet stretch) I could let go of the steering wheel completely and the car didn't deviate off line for at least half a mile. All the twitchy-ness and nervousness was gone and the road manner and handling were spot-on.
After being initially worried that I'd bought a lemon I can honestly say that the work carried out by Tony has totally transformed the car and I'm more than happy with the level of service and the cost. Tony is a great guy who clearly knows what he's talking about and is passionate and enthusiastic about what he does - I'd recommend him and the services of WIM to anyone!
And as an added bonus a McLaren MP4-12C turned up for a set of summer boots, which was nice to have a nosey at!
Hope that's been helpful but feel free to ask if you want to know more.
Cheers
mrgibbs68
