The BMW alloy wheels for the e34 BMW 5 series can be a bit of a issue fitting if you want to go beyond the 18 inch size. Fitting after market alloy wheels which one can obtain from many car accessory shops may cause vibration when your car reaches 60 miles per hour. Also this vibration possibly could occur under braking, which may make you believe that a wheel balancing problem is out of the question. When this symtoms first manifests, some individuals will assume it is a balancing problem as it only happens around the 50 – 60MPH mark.
I have had my tyres on my own BMW balanced and rebalanced a number of times. Only to find that after even a day the vibration is back again, even when I thought it had helped. 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. After changing the discs and pads the vibration issue was still there.
It was then said that the result in the problem could have been the anti roll bushes or the track control arm. My conclusion was to swap both of these objects. The next thing was to check that the wheels were not buckled. As they appeared fine I swapped the front wheels with the back wheels to see if this helped in any way.
The aftermarket BMW 5 series estate E39 wheels today are said by the suppliers that they are suited for the E39 as well as the E34 model. However a hub on the E34 model BM is much smaller than its newer sister, which means that even although there are moldable shims supplied with the wheels they are not suitable. I have tried three different styles of wheels on my BMW E34 with the same vibration issue , 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.
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. With these shims fitted the vibration stopped. I have only found these shims for sale on eBay, so they may be worth a look if you are experiencing the same woes.
