Is steering dampener for W210 a DIY project?
 

My '97 E420 has 95K miles and have been having difficulty with a slight shimmy. Did the Hunter balancing, high speed balancing, new tires. indexed on wheels, and still a slight shimmy. I've heard that replacing the steering dampener could be a solution. Any comments? Can I do this myself? I have a floor jack and jack towers and I can replace brakes, rotors,etc..., but have never done steering or suspension work.

The W210 has no steering damper. It has rack and pinion steering and the tie rods attach to the ends of the rack. The older cars with recirculating ball steering had a damper (basically a weak shock absorber) fitted between the chassis and the drag link (the link beween the pitman arm and idler arm).

Have you had runout and wobble checked on the rotors? Imperfect seating to the hub or a mismanufactured part you replaced could drive you to distraction looking for alignment/wear problems. Worse is, a badly seated rotor could eventually cause a wear pattern in the tread that will allow the tires to accentuate the shimmy.

Steve

Front rotors and pads were replaced by the dealer and did not improve the shimmy. However, I do notice that the shimmy is slightly worse when I gently apply the brakes, but only at the speeds the shimmy is already present.

At 97k mi, then, I would vote for worn lower ball joints, tie rod ends, or worn rack guide as the remaining suspects.

Steve

Thanks for the help.

Had the same problem on my 97 E320. Steering wheel shimmy at 50-60 mph. Turned out to be the lower control arm bushings. Hope this helps.

The damper is built in
 

It seems everyone says there is not a damper on the W210. This is because its not external like on older MB. MB calls it them a damper as you can see in the attachments. My question is > can the seals be changed out?

Regards,
Bill