I just got a new set of tires on my mini, complete with a front end alignment. I noticed that any speed above 50mph or so I will sometimes get some shaking/vibration in the steering wheel. At first I thought it was a bad balance on tires, so I had the tire shop recheck them. They said that they were all balanced correctly. The strange thing is that it comes and goes. I can be running 80mph on the interstate and the wheel will be perfectly smooth...no vibration at all. Then all of a sudden it will start shaking/vibrating a little bit....it feels just like a bad tire or out of balance wheel....but then after a minute or so, it fades away and it's smooth again. Then maybe after another minute...it will start back up again. If it's vibrating and I change lanes or turn the wheels at all, it sees to make it stop...then after a minute of so of straight line driving, it starts back up again.

Could it be something with the front end alignment? Could there not be enough toe in the front end? Could the front tires be "hunting" a little...left to right if there they are set to close to 0 deg toe-in? Anything else you can think of to check? It's very strange....and annoying!

 

Did you get new/different rims?! If so....Sounds a bit like hudcentric rings on the new wheels might be the wrong size for the mini. I bought a set of winter rims....shop claimed since the bolts would center the hub...lol...found a different tech, same chain, and they got me the right hubcentric rings, no vibrations.
If you have the same rims as before, sounds like maybe a bad tire...notice any excessive wheel weights?

 

Rotate the tires and see if the noise goes away. I suspect you might have other issues.

 

Hubcentric rings?? I have no idea what you are talking about

These are G-Force Sport tires on factory 17" S-Lite wheels. There was no vibration with the old tires.

 

They may not be mounted correctly or lost a wheel weight (happened to me) - take them back to the shop that mounted them and tell them they aren't balanced correctly

I had missed you said they were rebalanced - makes me wonder if really so and if (sounds stupid) any wheel lugs might be loose - seen that too!

 

...deleted. I should have read more carefully before posting.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I think I may have the balanced checked at a different shop. I talked with a few people at work that said they had some bad experiences with the shop I decided to have install my tires. Sounds like they have a tendency to do bad balances on tires.....maybe they just don't know how to properly use their machine, or it's way out of calibration.

Guess I will have to see what a different shop says. Hopefully the wheels are just out of balance. Who knows....maybe one of the new tires could be bad, or have some kind of bump in it...or be out of round??

 

Keep us posted. Good luck.

 

When the front toe was not adjusted correctly on my car, I got a similar shake.

 

Since they are factory rims, and were on the car before, no hubcentric rings needed. If the shop mounted the tires in a hurry and did not clean the mating surface where the rim meets the hub/rotor, you can get some pretty interesting shakes...done it to myself swapping winter/sumer rims.
Hubcentric rings are the "adaptors" if you think of them that way that matches the rims center to the cars hub...they MUST be the same size on a car with hubcentric wheels....some cars are lug centric....and are centered by the bolts. Some tire shops with a guy with no training sometimes mess up...and the hubcentic ring can fall off, get stuck on the hub, etc or never get installed with new rims...and you get shakes that come and go...happened with the first set of rims i bought.

 

Maybe this will help you understand what they are
http://www.justforwheels.com/hub-centric-rings.jsp

 

Agreed swap the tires with the rears and see what happens. Could be a defective tire.....

 

Have you had your lower control arms bushings inspected? I had a similar issue on my '04 MCS, new tires, multiple checks on balance and alignments; changed out the bushings which solved the problem. Just a thought.

Matt

 

If the shakes come and go as you say, then you have a mild imbalance in both front wheels,
and they can add to or cancel out each other depending on the phase relationship of each tire
to the other, which changes as you drive and turn. They can even do this on a perfectly straight
road if one tire has a larger diameter than the other (say, due to different amount of remaining tread
or uneven inflation pressures).

 

It takes my shop an average of three tries to get the balance right on my wife's audi, on my clubman they seem to always get it first try.

Point being, sometimes they just have to keep trying till they get it right - or try another shop with either better equipment or more skilled people. In my wife's car's case, they usually wind up having the shop foreman balance them, then they're fine.

You could have a bad tire too - a separated belt will cause that too....if you move the fronts to the rear and the shake moves with it, you'll at least know where the problem is....

 

Well, I took my car to a well known tire/wheel shop in town to have them look at my wheels/tires. They said that the wheels that Sams said were balanced, were out way out of balance. They even had to remount one of the tires for me.

They balanced the wheels on their HUNTER Road Force balance machine....those things are pretty slick!

Needless to say, now the car drives great...no vibration in the steering wheel at all!!

Now I just need to call the Service Manager at the local Sams Club (where I bought my tires and had them installed) and tell him that his tire guys are a bunch of idiots!!!

 

Hand him the bill too.

 

+1 on that.

 

I'm sorry to hear that Sam's Club put you through all that trouble. Our local Sam's has done perfect balancing on all of our vehicles and their work is meticulous. It sounds like the workers at your store are untrained, but if that were the case it seems most of their work would come back.