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If you choose to fit wheels of 18 inch and above to the E34 BMW 5 series, some problems can be encountered with some wheels. Fitting after market alloy wheels which one can get from several car accessory shops may cause vibration when your car reaches 60 miles per hour. This vibration may occur when the car is under braking, which may make you believe it is not a wheel balancing problem. Wheel balancing may at first appear to be the problem as the fault may seem to occur around the 50-60 mph speed mark.

I have found that balancing and re-balancing my own wheels and tyres on my car have proved to have little help, even though at first I thought there might have been a difference. As the fault also occurred when the car was under braking, I was led to believe that the fault lay in the brake discs being warped and eventually had these changed when the MOT was due. Even although the new discs and pads were fitted. there was still vibration problems there.

It was said to me that the track control arms are normally the problem 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. The next thing tried was checking to see if the wheels might be buckled and I also changed the back for the front wheels and visa versa, but with no better results.

Now virtually of the after market BMW 5 series diesel alloys you will find are suited to fit the BMW E39 model as well as the E34 model which means that the wheels should be the same and many suppliers will tell you they are the same. Hubs on the E34 models are essentially smaller than the E39 models, which means even with plastic shims supplied with the wheels, these are not really appropriate for the E34 models. Three various styles of aftermarket alloy wheels were tested on my E34 BMW including one set of BMW MV style type 1. The following set of wheels was some TSW style wheels and then some AC Schnitzer brand which are ok on my now updated E39 model. The problem always tends to appear when you go above the 18inch size.

Some shims were discovered on eBay one day whilst searching for wheels which are specially made to stop the vibration issue on these cars. With these shims fitted the vibration halted. I have only found these shims for sale on eBay, so they may be worth a look if you are experiencing the same woes.

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