I figured you knew but I don't hold much confidence in that shop. I've seen some shops hit the lugs with some hefty air guns.

 

Dude at the point of frustration I was at, I would have taken the advice to fart near the car to get rid of the vibration and probably would have tried it.

I appreciate the good advice and I totally agree...when I tried to remove the lugs they had hit with the gun at the shop I had to do it by hand cause they had overtightened with the gun. I tested my gun to get it pretty much perfectly to 80 ft lb depending on what impact I set it to.

J.

 

Ok...so secondary update. The vibration is NOT gone...how friggin annoying.
Going to this place GOODROADS, my friend took his car to to get rid of an annoying vibration. I hope they can figure it out.

J.

 

Good luck, dude...that's got to be hella disappointing at this point in time. =/

 

man that sucks.. have you tried rotating the rears to the front? I know it SHOULDNT help but you never know..

my cousin works at wheel world in miami, and I am sure they can take a look at it.. just tell him I sent you.. my cousins name is brent.. ask for him or pedro.. if you decide to go there..

 

Same here. Just bought 4 new Falkens and still vibration at about 50 onwards. I'm getting the roadfroce balance done on Friday. Hopefully that will solve the problems.

 

Definitely disappoointing guys...
RJ, can't rotate, offset is different. I did throw the Aspecs back on the front and it was gone, so I KNOW it's wheel related. My faith in tires plus has dropped drastically.
1st, regular balance, vibration
2nd roadforce, vibration
3rd roadforce after calibration (supposedly) still vibration
4th time they roadforced suppsedly to determine if the tire is in a good location on the rim, then balanced on the high speed balancer.

What makes me question them is they said it was perfect both of the last 2 times but the front right rim had the weights moved completely opposite of the time previously that it was balanced. I'm sorry, but they can't both be right.

In my opinion, they need to spin the rim at the same speed I am feeling vibration or they won't recreate it. RJ, if these people are a pain, I may take you up on that! I miss having a totally smooth ride!

 

I forgot that they were staggered. I hate vibrations with wheels. Are u hub rings plastic or metal?

Yah let me know if you want to try wheel world. I may just drive down there with you.

 

That might be splendid. I'm assuming they specialize in this sort of thing?

I'm using plastic rings...think that's it? That little tiny MM difference is causing the rim to be slightly offcenter when torqued down making it increasingly annoying as speed increases? I will admit every time I change the lugs and try retorquing while car is in the air etc, I feel like it gets better/worse with no rhyme or reason.

Goodroads it kinda far east and out of the way, and they are charging 15 bucks a wheel to balance (which is fine if they solve the problem and it's just the front 2) plus they are only open till 530pm Tues-Sat.

Where in Miami is this other place?
PM me your number again RJ please...I reset my phone and lost em all.

 

You can try getting the lugs snug in the air and torquing them on the ground. Not likely to help but it's free.

 

I tried doing that^
Maybe it was better...I even tried swapping to my stock lugs again. Not sure about that either.
I lowered pressure to 35/32 F/R. It seems worse at lower pressures.
Maybe I do need metal rings to ensure it's perfect.

I'm not saying it's ridiculous...it's really not, it's just annoying feeling the front end lightly vibrating at 60 and up.

 

Ok...went by goodroads (now called elite roads) today, they specialize in aftermarket wheels period. They rebalanced the wheels and told me wheels are straight, tires are not out of round. Turns out my hubcentric rings had a LITTLE play in them. No good...so he got me some new ones up front and put some extra blue tape stuff on them to ensure they were snug on the wheel. So far so good....


Yay.

 

Nice! I hate those plastic hub centric rings!

 

I guess next time I'll spring for the polycarbonate ones or the metal ones. I was just afraid of fitment issues originally. Maybe I'm crazy, this guy went thru like 5 different sets to find the one that seemed PERFECT for the wheel.

 

I just installed wheels on my car and I have vibration at highway speed. I'm running a 5mm spacer and no hubcentric ring.

Do I need hubcentric ring?

 

I think you probably do, especially if you go with a larger rim with less rubber, you're more prone to vibration IMO because you feel everything!
Don't waste your time like me though, take the car straight to a place that specializes in wheels and deals with stock sizes to crazy 28" wheels...they do this all day, they deal with vibrations and will find the perfect hubcentric rings for you.

 

I'm going to bring the car to work tomorrow and my technician throw them on a balancer 1st. If vibration does not go away, then I'l bring it to tire place.

 

That's good advice. It's why I take my car to a racing shop that mostly does circle track cars to get it aligned and another shop that does most of the cars that see 160mph+ for balancing. Our TLs are cake for a shop like vs a shop that half asses everything to try and kick as many cars per day out as possible.

 

Thank you!, and I totally agree with you. I took my car back to Tireplus 4 times. 2 time speed and 2 times roadforce, not once did they think to even check my hubcentrics and how tight they were. I thought they were good, I didn't realize they weren't tight enough. Went to Elite roads in pompano where they have some crazy ghetto cars and custom rides with huge wheels...no shit, 15 minutes in the guy had figured it out for me. In addition, they only charged me for the balancing and not for the new hubcentrics or the troubleshooting he did in addition to balance.

PS...just figured out today something too...I was reading what you wrote about RSB...I have a 6MT and decided to switch to "track" setting. Wow...feels good. Pretty stiff, but seems tighter. Front felt a little buttery but set my front Tein SS to 6 from hardest and it seems pretty well balanced. In doing so I took at look at the spring top perch because I heard a weird old mattress sound when getting into my car today, sure enough, both front springs were not seated correctly in the gold tophat thing. I guess when I jacked the car up at some point they both moved. So that MAY or MAY NOT have added to my vibration problem. Definitely brought the nose of the car back down a quarter inch which is where I had gotten used to it.

 

This vibration issue is so frustrating. I had the all 4 wheels roadforce balanced and the vibration still exists. Question, should the hub rings be tight on the rim or on the rotor? I noticed the guy had another set he was testing out while I was there and the one he had fit very tight on the rotor as opposed to the one I have on mine. Idk what to do from here and the shop is like 60 miles away. I dont even like getting on the highway

 

Tight on rotor AND rim. The one the guy ended up using for me, he picked one that was tight on the rotor and then he put some special metallic tape around the ring on the outside to ensure snugness when set in the rim. So far so good!

 

sometime it's a bad tire. the belt could be shifted internally and cause vibration doesn't matter how good you balance the tire. try to find out which one.

swap your front to the rear to see if the problem lessen. if you feel vibration in your seat, it's the rear wheels, and if you continue to feel vibration in the steering wheel, it has something to do with your front end.

the thing with tire shops, they store tires on their sidewall and stack them on top of each other. the one on the bottom will obviously have the most weight and be out of shape more than the rest. if you find out that it's one of your tires, have them remove and remount the bad tire and rebalance.

 

also, if one type of balancing does not work, tell them to try the other. there are 3 ways to balance a tire, roadforce like everyone has mentioned here, i find that it's the best method as it simulate your car driving on the road but the problem is that it does not spin fast enough to calculate for high speed. the other 2 are dynamic and static balancing. i believe dynamic balancing is where they add weight to both the inner and outer part of the rim where static balancing is only done to the inner side of the rim. you'll just have to find out which method is best for your tire.

 

How can you tell if the tire is bad? I have had my front end checked out twice within the past month by the dealer and they say everything checks out fine. There are some yellow dots that are on the sidewall, do these have to match up with the valvestems? I plan to dedicate all day friday to getting the issue resolved. I feel like just giving up and trading the car at this point.

 

like i said, try swapping out fronts to rears and rears to front.

vibration in front = front bad
vibration in your a$$ = rear bad

put the car on the hoist, just a little bit so that the front tires are off the ground, choke one of the drive wheel, give it some gas and listen to the noise. do the same to the other drive wheel. if one of the tires is bad, you'll hear it hum differently.

when you buy new tires, check for the manufacture date too, if it's more than 5 years old, don't put them on your car. tires that are on sale normally are 3 to 4 years since manufactured.

look for a 4 digit code on the side wall.
|2007| means manufactured week 20 of year 2007
|1900| means manufactured week 19 of year 2000
|4010| means manufactured week 40 of year 2010
etc....

 

That's some good information, seeing as how the hubcentric rings were my problem, I guess getting the right ones for the rear would be good too huh?! I feel the seat shake a little but I think I'm just looking for itnow.

 

Damn J you've had one hell of a time figuring out what's going on! Like you, I've experienced the "shimmy" when accelerating. Instead of feeling it in the steering, I feel it in my gas pedal.

I know I'm missing some wheel weights so maybe I should look into that first before taking it to the shop.

 

Tell me about it, man. I swear, the more I think about a problem on the car the worse it becomes. Then sometimes some time will pass and I won't even notice it anymore and it's probably not because it went away!

What do you mean wheel weights? Like, just throw some on there?

 

Subscribed...I have same issues..at same speeds etc.

 

3 of my 4 wheels don't have wheel weights. The one that does is on the front left. Maybe with the wheels weighing different amounts, the axle shakes?

Even if that solves my problem, it doesn't solve yours.

 

If you're 100% sure that your wheels are balanced, get the printout and take it to the dealer if it's still under warranty and tell them to check your suspension and drive shafts.

If you pay attention, 90% of drive shafts have a round thick rubber piece near the center of the shaft, it's used to balance the drive shaft. if you buy an aftermarket driveshaft, it'll come with this rubber balancing weight due to lower quality control.

 

No sir, I'm out of warranty. But believe it or not, when trying to figure out my 2nd gear "shimmy" last year I ended up changing out both left and right axles. Took care of the problem and they are OEM.

I thought I gave an update, but my problem has been solved basically by going to a place that specializes in bigger wheels. The dude found me a tight hubcentric ring and put some sort of tape around the diameter of it so it would sit snug in the rim and my vibrations are gone. I was trying to pay attention on the drive in today if my butt was shaking and nope, nothing. I think I do feel the occasional vibration at certain speeds, but definitely not like before. On a bigger wheel, that 1mm you may be off when you tighten the lugs will make all the difference. Trust me, if you have this problem, go to a shop that knows what they're doing, not tire kingdom or tires plus that is meant for Mommy with her camry and bubbly 15's. I wasted numerous hours trying to have people diagnose that don't specialize and are therefore ill equipped.