Hi folks. Got a lovely set of wheels from NAM member twstlvr on Friday and new tires from Tirerack (Alex, got them from your colleauge Jake).

Anyway, went to discount tire on Saturday am, they mounted and balanced the wheels... a set of absolutely delicious ADR M Classics on Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3's....

Get out to start motoring and soon as I go over 50mph the steering wheel and car are nicely vibrating for me. If my back was sore, maybe I wouldn't complain but otherwise it got annoying marginally quickly. So, no problem, I went back this morning to get them re done...they remount the tires and re balance all of them. Out motoring again and yes, it's still nicely vibrating after I go over 70 - not any lighter than before I might add.

I could go back but I'm starting to wonder why two attempts have gone by and they can't get it right. I'd rather just go somewhere else and get it done. I just feel like they won't be able to fix it and it'll become one of those "crazy customer stories".....regardless, anyone reading this in the Phoenix area who has a recommendation? Alex? Any good installers around here?

Cheers.
haf :smile:

 

i work at Discount Tire here in Illinois, and usually if the your steering wheel is vibrating that means that the wheels are out of balance. Seeing that you have been there twice, the balancer may be out of calibration.

Also, if the Discount Tire's balancer has "road force" technology, they can see if the tires are out of round, if the wheels are bent.

Those are just some of the possible things i could think of. Hope that helps!

Chris

 

Thanks Chris.. The wheels are immaculate. Zero issues there. It's just really hard to tell. They never offered a "road force" balancing but I've seen that offered at other places.

So now what if the steering wheel doesn't vibrate as much but the car does....to the same degree that you'd feel it in the steering wheel? WHen I'm doing about 80, my seat and foot pedal feel like they are vibrating. It's unusually irritating.

haf :smile:

 

hafid,

Another important thing to check is that you have the right hub-centric mounting rings and that they are installed correctly in the wheel centers. Any problem there and your wheels might be locating on the lug bolts instead of the hub centers as they should. This often causes vibration problems and, even worse, sometimes wheels that can work loose and/or fall off while driving! I don't think I'd be testing too much at 80!!

For those new to aftermarket wheels: hub-centric rings are adapters that adapt general aftermarket wheels to specific car applications. Most aftermarket wheels have a large center bore (often around 73mm in diameter). The MINI has a 56.1mm hub. The plastic or aluminum rings press or snap into the wheels to adapt from the 73mm to 56.1mm, making the wheel locate precisely on the hub; the lug bolts then just fix the wheel "to" the hub.

Best of luck to you,

James

 

Haf,

The hub centric rings are correct for the ADR's. The ADR's have a wheel bore of 73mm and the hub bore is 56.1mm like Mister_S suggested. The wheels were perfect when I had them so I'm thinking you may have a problem with one of the tires or a wheel was damaged during the mounting process. Tires will cause vibration issues just as much as a wheel can. I would recommend rotating one side at a time to narrow down the problem wheel/tire. After you have rotated same side only, and the problem persists, rotate the wheels back the way they were and try the other side. The only other thing I've heard of, and maybe 2perCooper (Chris)can confirm, is that some shops will use the wheel mounting machine that presses the wheel from the inside to hold it in place. I've heard of wheels getting damaged when using too much pressure to hold these clamps on the inside of the wheel.

Good Luck,

Jason

 

I was just going to add that the rings I have were correct! Jason beat me to it! For others, I bought these wheels from Jason. I see no reason to suspect any issues with the wheels. I watched the guys do the work and it appears that there really couldn't be much of anything that would affect the wheel. The tires are brand new and have no damage.

I'm going to visit another store and see if I can get the re-balancing done there. I just feel like the calibration on this machine might be off by a little that it's enough to affect my ride at high speeds.

Thanks for the input.
haf :smile:

 

Haf -

1st off... Nice fin!!
2nd off... Jake is doing well I assume?? PM me
3rd and most importandley - Wheel balacing is much trickier than it seems.

The advantage of a road force balncer (technoligy pateneted by Hunter)
is that you can measure a wheel's radial run-out, and you can measure the tire's force variation. What this means is that the machien shows the lowest point of the wheel, and allows you to match mount the stiffest point on the tire. This yeilds pontentially the most comfortable ride.

Use these links to find the Installers you need -with a Hunter GSP9700

TireRack's recomended Installers
Hunter's dealer locator

Alex

 

Thanks Alex :smile: I apprecaite the comments!

PM sent!

haf :smile:

 

Any luck with any other installers??

If you were in Chicago, I would do it for ya

anything for fellow motorers!

Chris

 

Cheers Chris! I have an appt. tomorrow with Wheels Specilialists in Tempe....I explained the issue to them and they're going to help me out. I'll report back tomorrow!

haf :smile:

 

Update: problems are fixed! Balancing was WAY OFF apparently. The wheels, tires, and rings are all perfect. The road force was correct on two wheels and off on the others...all in all, they were just a mess.

These guys were great and took care of everything!

cheers
haf :smile:

 

>>Update: problems are fixed! Balancing was WAY OFF apparently. The wheels, tires, and rings are all perfect. The road force was correct on two wheels and off on the others...all in all, they were just a mess.
>>
>>These guys were great and took care of everything!

Any explanation why two wheels were way off and the other two were not?
Was it technician error or machine error-seems that if the technology was sufficient to do a decent job on two wheels it should have done the same on the two wheels in question- that would leave human error to blame.

_________________
Aloha

 

Minihune,

No explanation from me. I blame Discount's machine being off. Two times the wheels were mounted and balanced with poor results. I'm sure the tech new what he was doing (and it wasn't the same tech each time).

I'm a little baffled by it all but happy it all works.

haf :smile:

 

>>
>>No explanation from me. I blame Discount's machine being off. Two times the wheels were mounted and balanced with poor results. I'm sure the tech new what he was doing (and it wasn't the same tech each time).
>>
>>I'm a little baffled by it all but happy it all works.
>>
>>haf :smile:

Good to see that everything worked out for ya

I guess they just didnt check the machine's calibration.... We always check and calibrate both our balancers first thing in the morning.

Did the new installers road force and match mount your tires? or did they just re-balance them?

Chris

 

Chirs,

They did not remount - they just road force balaned all four tires from scratch. Oh, I forgot to add, he put the pressure at 45 psi and told me that I should not go lower than 40.

The place that did it was a custom shop that deals almost exclusively in 20"+ wheels...

Anyway, any thoughts on the pressure rating?

haf :smile:

 

that's a crazy high psi for street... even my wrx's S03's only see max 37psi
for canyon carving....

 

Uh...the PSI should not be higher than 30 (MC) or 33 (MCS) for light loads (driver with or without one passenger). With four passengers and some cargo it goes up to 35 and 38 or so...

 

Haf,

Keep the PSI at 33 if you plan to keep your new tires for a while! Glad to hear they were able to correct the vibration.

Jason

 

Hmmm, interesting, looks like I need to drop that pressure! Thanks for the tip!

haf :smile:

 

Make sure not to adjust the pressure until the car has not moved for 6 hours. Allways adjust pressures cold!

Alex