The BBS Solution

After I found out about the need to reseal the BBSes, I basically had two choices:

• have them resealed by someone who knows what they're doing.
• sell them as is, and buy something else.

I took my sweet time pondering what to do. Soon after the problem initially surfaced, I created a thread at a Finnish Mercedes-Benz forum asking for help: I needed to find someone who would, for a fair fee, disassemble, sand, clean, reseal properly and assemble the rims. Unless I found that helpful soul, I was sure I was going to let the wheels go and cut my losses.

However, a man did offer to help. He was 3 hours away but would do the job for a reasonable price. In a rare strike of luck, a friend (the same one who lended me the Kanaldeckels for a while) was headed in that exact city soon-ish, and offered to take the wheels there. I gladly accepted unless there was an offer of help nearer until the day he was going, and there wasn't, so off the BBSes went.

The guy was a hobbyist who posts at the aforementioned forums every once in a while, and dangles with rims & cars etc. Of course, he had a workshop for stuff like that. He seemed pretty knowlegdeable of multiparter rims and BBSes in particular, and had done stuff like this before.

It took some time (about 2 weeks) for him to get my nonfunctional Sika seal off the rims, do the prepwork and the job itself. I know it must've been pretty awful to remove the Sikaflex from the rims, as I did a bulk of that removal job myself the day before the rims were gonna go out. Frankly, the stuff was fuckin' solid. Incredibly adhesive and would not peel off. It would crumble into small pieces before letting go of the rim surface, despite me having not sanded the surface before applying the stuff like Sika recommend when dealing with aluminium.

Anyway, while the dude was working his magic, he thought to ask if I'd like some stainless steel valves for the wheels. Well, I'd heard that most hobbyists use them, they do look pretty nice and really are the "correct" kind of accessory for high-end rims like these, aren't very easily obtainable for BBSes in this country, and he wasn't asking much for them, so I said why not. They do look great on the rims.

Once done, he did an awesome job packaging the wheels up for a bus ride back home. That freight service did cost an extra 35 eur, but what's most important is that they got here undamaged.

There is now a seal between the parts, and in the valley on the outside:

It's also Sika so good luck disassembling the rims ever again, but once some tires were mounted they did finally hold air.

Speaking of tires, when the BBS project was nearing completion, enough time had passed that summer tires became a topic of much pondering. I had workable friction tires on the Pentas and the brand new GoodYear frictions in storage, but no summers yet. Again, I had two choices.

• Get some ContiPremiumContact2's off the interwebs and have them mounted at a local tire shop.
• Get something cheap for a nice round number at the aforementioned tire shop. This became a viable option when the tire shop I'd bought the GoodYears from had started treating me really well as a customer, letting me debug the BBSes using their equipment and personnel for free. They made me a really good offer on some cheapo tires: Point-S Summerstar2 205x55 R16 (designed by Continental) for 350 EUR including mounting, balancing etc. ContiPremiumContact2's would've been around 400e from the interwebs, not including mounting which usually comes to about 20-40e, so this time I decided to make my first foray into cheapo tires, grabbing the wannabe-continentals off the shelf and saving some cash.

Quality aside (which shall become known a bit later into spring), there were a few points about these point-s (). First, tire size. This car should actually run 215s at a minimum and preferably 225s. Trouble is, those are expensive. I mean they're an absolute fucking ripoff. They were charging about 30% or 50% more for a set of 215/225 wide tires depending on profile. I thought, since the difference is cosmetic at best, and worse comfort at worst, I'd just keep going the 205/55 route like I had with the winters.

Second, obviously the tires aren't gonna be as good as real Continentals. But I thought about it this way. My driving over the summer is not going to be hardcore enough to warrant the difference. In the summer months there's always going to be plenty of grip. I don't ever really accelerate hard, I like wofting. And this car's not for fast cornering anyway - it's an S-Class! My #1 concern is tire noise. I asked about this, and they're supposed to be somewhat quiet, though not as so as real Contis. All in all, I think I'm gonna be good with these.