The reason I ask, is that my Mini has an awful shimmy in the steering wheel, that is more pronounced at hight speeds. At low speeds it's barely felt, but by the time the car gets up to 75-90, it is quite violent. I've had the car since december, and it's always had a shimmy. But a few days ago, I had a new set of tires put on (ditched run flats) and the vibration was even worse after the car came out of the tire place. I've ruled out an unbalanced wheel because, well, the tires were just balanced on friday and the problem existed before, just to a lesser extent.

 

it could still be bad balance.. or alignment?

 

Did they road force balance the wheels/tires? I had to take one set of track wheels/tires back 3 times for balancing, until they finally road force balanced them and got them right...

During the tire manufacturing process, there's a lot that can go wrong - belts can shift, etc. - and that can be really hard to balance out. Some manufacturers seem to be worse than others...

Also, believe it or not, I've seen at least one instance where the tire shop rolled the tire on the rim and there was water trapped inside! Talk about hard to balance...

 

I'll take it back to the shop and tell them there is an odd shudder in the car since I had my new tires on, and see what they do. It's really quite severe. Before, I didn't mind it so much, but now it's bad enough that it's going to drive me nuts.

 

Answer: no

 

It is possible to warp the rotors if the lugs are tightened unevenly, but you'd only feel that when braking, unless they're REALLY warped.
Definitely have the shop take a look at the wheels and spin them again to rule them out. They should also be able to check the runout in the rotors as well.

 

I just installed the rotors myself a week ago- if they're bent, I'll be REALLY pissed. But I don't think that's the case, they don't shudder at all on braking.

 

I've also noticed now, that when I take a curve on the highway, the wobble is lessened drastically, sometimes almost nonexistant. But when I straighted the wheel out again, it's back.

 

So I swapped my wheels front to back yesterday, and the wobble continues- so that rules out a balance issue. Could it be a bad wheel bearing?

 

I have a shimmy too....at about 50mph. I only had the car 2 days before I switched to 18" wheels, and I'm assuming I need to have them rebalanced. I'm pretty darn sure it didn't do it before I swapped wheels. But now I'm worried it could be something else after hearing your story.

 

With the car parked, wheels on the ground, grab the wheels / tires and try to move them around by hand. If you can, it's a wheel bearing issue. But you really should have a professional check out the car. They'll be able to figure it out better then we can.