Wheels For BMW

If you need to fit wheels of 18 inch and over to the E34 BMW, some problems can be encountered with some wheels. You could find that if you fit any form of non BMW alloy wheels similar to some of the after market type wheels you can obtain from the accessory shops, when you fit them and start to go over the sixty miles per hour range you start to get some sort of vibration coming through the steering wheel. You may also get this vibration through braking which sort of throws a spanner in the works if you thought it was only just a balancing problem. When this symptoms first manifests, several people will assume it is a balancing problem as it only happens around the 50 - 60MPH mark.
On personal experience I have had the tyres balanced and rebalanced several times with thinking there is a little improvement each time, but then the fault seemed to come back after a day or so. Then when the fault started to appear when braking I was thrown down the route of thinking it was the brake discs that were at fault and when the MOT came around the front brake discs had to be changed anyway because they were just under the legal limit. Once the new discs and pads were fitted, the vibration problem 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 cause of the vibration. My decision was to substitute both of these objects. The following thing tried was checking to see if the wheels were buckled and I also changed the back for the front wheels and visa versa, but with no better results.
When buying many of these E39 car wheels from the after-market shops, they will tell you that the wheels are the same to fit the E34 models as well as the E39 model. 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 suitable for the E34 models. I have tried three different styles of wheels on my BMW E34 with the same vibration trouble , one was the MV style type 1 BMW wheels. 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. When fitting 18 inch style wheels would the problem really show.
Then by chance I was looking through EBay and I came across some metal shims which are designed especially for the BMW E34 to stop this vibration problem. Once these shims had been fitted the vibration finally disappeared. I have only located these shims for sale on eBay, so they may be worth a look if you are experiencing the same woes.