BMW Wheel Problems

If you intend fit alloy wheels to a BMW E34 5 series some problems can be encountered if care is not taken. Non standard alloy wheels that you can buy from almost accessory shops, you can find this will make the steering wheel vibrate when you reach speeds around 60MPH. Also this vibration may occur under braking, which may make you believe that a wheel balancing problem is out of the equation. First if this fault seems to appear under the acceleration and approximately the fifty to sixty mark, folks can tend to think it is the balancing of the wheels.

I have had my tyres on my own BMW balanced and rebalanced several times. Only to discover that after even a day the vibration is back again, even when I thought it had helped. Then when the fault started to appear when braking I was thrown down the route of reasoning it was the brake discs that were at fault and when the MOT came round the front brake discs had to be replaced anyway because they were just under the legal limit. Once the new discs and pads were fitted, the vibration trouble was still there.

It was said to me that the track control arms are usually the trouble that makes the car pull to the left when braking and no doubt the reason of the vibration. So I decided to change both items. I also checked the wheels were not buckled in any way. The wheels were also swapped from front to back to check that this was not the problem. But to no avail.

When buying many of these E39 BMW 5 series alloys wheels from the aftermarket shops, they will tell you that the wheels are the same to fit the E34 models as well as the E39 model. However a hub on the E34 model BM is some what smaller than its newer sister, which means that even although there are moldable shims supplied with the wheels they are not suitable. Three various styles of aftermarket alloy wheels were tested on my E34 BMW including one set of BMW MV style type 1. I also tried the TSW Vipor style wheels which gave the same fault and the opted for some AC Schnitzer replica wheels in the end.

By chance I was looking on eBay and stumbled across some metal shims that were designed especially for the BMW E34 to eliminate this vibration issue. With these shims fitted the vibration halted. If you are experiencing the same woes, it could be worth you taking a look on eBay yourself to find some.