So I’ve been sorting out my new to me c280 the last three months. I had a good success experience fixing a pesky steering wheel vibration. Apparently these cars have a lot of different things that can cause vibes but here is what I did to solve it.

New tires with balancing. This helped but didn’t completely fix it.

DIY home alignment. I used my Fast Trax alignment gauge to set the toe at 1mm toe in. This helped a lot. The prior owner must have hit something and knocked it out. It was like 12mm toe out when I bought the car.

The last bit of shaking was ironed out by changing the idler arm bushing and the drag link/tie rod assembly. I had a helper shake the wheels while I looked around under the car. There was quite a bit of ply. I originally thought it was worn wheel bearings given how bad the wheel shake was but I packed those and adjusted them and it didn’t help. So I pulled the tie rods and idler arm bushing and replaced them with URO.

Before you jump all over me for putting URO on the car I didn’t want to spend too much. The car only cost me $2000 and I am not too sure how long I’ll drive it. And I have found the quality of URO has been going up in recent years. Nonetheless I am taking a risk but it is pretty small considering how inexpensive the parts were. Also the new parts were new and beat my 150,000 mile parts by a wide margin. Anything was better than the rattling clapped out originals.

And the vibes are gone. I had a nasty one between 35-40 mph. Also I had this speed related hum that has also gone away. I’m pretty happy.

I’ve fixed a number of other things on the car like door locks, keys, oil, trans fluid, corroded coil contacts, vacuum leaks, ignition lock mechanism, evap hoses, serpentine belt and fan clutch. It was a pretty neglected car. Cosmetically it looked good but the prior owner was more of a spit and shine guy and not a mechanic.

The car is finally shaping up and becoming a fun driver.

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79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles
97 C280 147k miles