I bought my wife a 2005 standard mini with stock 15" wheels & tires two weeks ago. On a smooth road at 20 mph we feel a vibration. The frequency gets faster as the speed picks up, but then at highway speeds we don't really notice the vibration. The car has 33K miles on it. I assume it could be a bad tire, or imbalanced wheel, but I am suprised that the time we feel it most is at relatively slow speeds. Any other things can cause this?

Thanks. Rob.

 

You are right on with tire balance Rob!
slow speed vibration or steering wheel wobble is tire balance or tread wear, and high speed shimmy is alignment.
Good of you to buy your wife a MINI, tel her congrats, and happy motoring!!!

 

Why do you think High speed vibe is only alignment ? A wheel does not automatically balance itself at high speed.

In MOST cases, balancing issues do not become noticible until the tire's revolutions and speed increases.......

Incorrect alignment can be noticed by driver when travelling through a puddle of water on the highway, your car will have a tendancy to learch to eithe side, or car's tendency to pull either to the left or right in the highway when you let go of the steering wheel. And, after some time - uneven tire wear across the face of the tire.....

Who told you the stuff posted ?

 

Slow speed vibe is most likely a bad tire Rob, poss separated belt(s), and check the treads all the way around for flat spots.

 

my mini was doing the same thing last week after i got it aligned and balanced... but they didn't do the balance correctly and forgot to put balance weights on my wheels because they fell of from previous owner. check the weights and see if they match up, that will make an enormous difference

 

Find a shop that does "road force" balancing. This will check that your tires are actually round with no "hard spots". If you think about it, you could put a cinder block on a balancer and get it perfectly balanced, but it wouldn't ride too good! You can't get a tire balanced that is not round to start with...

 

I ran my hand around the left rear tire of the car. I believe I feel two depressions and one hump in the tire on the face of the tread in about a six inch area. I am assuming it is a broken belt, so no amount of balancing will help that. I put another post up about what tire size I can use because it looks like I will have to at least replace this tire, if not all four. Is it OK to only replace one tire if I stick with the same OEM tire? They have about 33,000 miles on them. Tread on the other three tires is still OK.

 

I had the same problem on my new tires. I would get vibrations from about 20-30 mph and over 50 mph. It turns out that one tire was not mounted correctly and was "out of round". Once it was fixed the problem was gone.