I don't know where to turn now, but I can't seem to find the problem of the steering wheel wobble. Here's the story:

2 weeks ago, I purchased a set of wheels and tires from tirerack. The wheels and tires were balance on hunter road force balance at tirerack before they shipped them to me.

Last week, I installed the wheels on the MINI and made sure the center hub rings were there before putting them on and the bolts are torqued. Once they were installed, i drove them for couple miles and didn't pay attention if there was any wheel vibration or wobble.

This past weekend, I spent more time with the MINI and I did notice there's a very slight wobble on the steering wheel when I'm on the speeds 40-60mph. This wobble does not occur always, every now and then.

Monday, I decided to call tirerack for advise on this issue, and they told me it could be one of the wheels is out of balance and they asked to visit any recommended tire installer in my area to have them checked and rebalanced if needed. So I scheduled an appointment for tuesday with autoeurope who specialize in sales and services of european cars (lotus, triumph,porsches, bmws, etc...)

Tuesday comes, I visit autoeurope to get my wheels checked and if needed to rebalance, they run the test, and they tell me there's one wheel which seems to be slightly bent. they used hunter roadforce balance and the rim readout was 0.026 which compared to the maximum allowable number is 0.1, they think it's acceptable. So they rebalance all 4 again, and they put that wheel in the back which was in the front to reduce the wobble. I leave autoeurope to go home, and guess what? the wobble is still there. I call tirerack and told them about that wheel/tire. tirerack ask me to go back to autoeurope and ask them for the rim readout print so i can sent it to tirerack and have them deal with the wheel/tire. I call autoeurope again to ask them if they have the rim readout, the adviser who i dealt with earlier tells me their hunter roadforce balancer doesnt print readouts, then they put me on hold for a minute and then they tell me to come back and redo that wheel to get the rim readout because they have it. I go there, and the advisor apologizes stating that he didnt know if their machine did that. So they take that "slightly bent wheel" out again and rerun the test and they print me the rim readout. I arrive home, sent the copy of the rim readout plus the receipt for the rebalance to the person i was dealing with at tirerack and gave the person a call, but didn't hear anything back. another person from tirerack calls me back after couple hours to tell me that they want me to go to another tire shop who can get rim readouts and verify that if that wheel is bent or not. I call the tire shop they asked me to go and they tell me they are closing early today, so i scheduled an appointment for wednesday "today". in the meantime, i decided to stop by discounttire which is a tire shop in my area to verify that autoeurope weren't just playing games and wanted to get rid of me and my problem. I asked discounttire to have the wheels and tires checked on their hunter roadforce balancer and to tell me the readouts for every wheel/tire and whether any of them need rebalance or if any of the wheels were bent or any of the tires were bad. After 30 minutes of waiting, they pull my MINI in the shop and run the tests on all four. the rim readouts numbers came out good: 0.004(the suppose to be slightly bent wheel), 0.013, 0.006, 0.004. they guy who ran the wheels on the balancer seemed to be pretty knowledgeable to me and he was an assistant manager there who done the test, and by coincident, he also had a mini cooper . He was nice to let me come in there and watch him run the tests on each wheel while the shop guys were busy running around. I took a picture of every rim readout, and he comforted me that the wheels and the tires were excellent no problem. He told me might be another problem I have and is definitely not the wheels or tires and he recommended me to give detroit tuned a visit. the guy at discounttire finished the paperwork and it was free of charge which was very nice of them. I left discounttire and called detroit tuned and explained the situation, and they told me to bring it in to look at it. they took the mini for a test drive, they saw the wobble i was talking about, and they told me it could be the wheels are not balanced. they ran the wheels on their balancer and 3 of the wheels were very out of balance and was recommended to rebalance them(that left a big confusion in my head). They did not have hunter roadforce balancer, so im not so sure how accurate their balancer is, but i decided to leave without balancing them while them charging a small ridiculous fee upon taking the wheels off and running them on their balancer and putting them back on, they did also check steering spindle and the control arm bushings and one of the bushings was leaking but was not bad and that can't be the problem that causing the steering wheel wobble. I explained to them that the wheels/tires were already checked by 2 tire shops that both had hunter roadforce balancer.

The MINI has about 23k miles.

At this point when I left detroit tuned, i was really confused at this point and can't really think of the problem might be or what to do next. As mentioned earlier, the mini is going to another tire shop to get the wheels checked and balanced if needed to today. If you guys have any advise and suggestions please shout 'em out. And sorry for the long paragraph.

 

Ok this could be the dumbest question that you are going to get, but since they are aftermarket wheels and TireRack will send the correct centering rings with you order if required. Now did the you or any of the shops check to make sure that they are the correct rings?

 

good observation, thats not a dumb question. the hub ring tirerack sent me came installed on the wheel. The rings snap flush on the wheel hub. as far as the inside diameter measurement of the ring, it could be a possibility that it's a little bigger which might cause the wobble. I doubt that the tire shops checked the ring size, i guess they assumed it's the right size. When I get home, i will have 1 hour to take a quick measurement of the rings inside diameter before taking the wheels to the shop. Thanks

 

Well I hope that is the problem since it should be an easy fix

 

it seems that the hub rings were the correct size. I went to the tire shop yesterday and ran the wheels on their hunter roadforce balancer and all four checked out good. It must be the problem is with me being a little picky

 

What tires did you have mounted?

 

I had a problem like this on another car with factory wheels and balanced by the Porsche dealer twice, then on a Hunter road force balancer at a shop who specializes in suspension and wheels for the track. Always zero'd out on the balancers, but had a vibration on around 60.

Then I had the suspension shop balance the front wheels on the car and the vibration was gone. You'll have to mark a stud to make sure you put the wheels back on correctly if removed, and you won't be able to rotate your tires, but that didn't matter since I had a staggered setup.

^^ On my car they were Dunlops and the Hunter showed one of them was slightly out of spec on runout(?), where the bands overlap/connect on the tread. Haven't bought Dunlops since.

 

One of the tires could be defective. Happened to me once, bought 4 new tires, all the balancing in the world won't fix it. Took Discount Tire a while to figure out which one it was.

 

i doubt its the tires. the tires are michelin pilot super sport 215/45/zr17 mounted on 17x7.5 sparco pro corsa wheels. Here are the numbers for the last wheel readout.

 

The uncertainty introduced by the centering rings is one reason I avoid non-hub centric wheels like wildfire.

Take the centering rings out, inspect them for damage.
Are centering rings metal or plastic?
If latter, they are liable to get crunched during installation and will never fit correctly again.
If the former (metal), 2x check that they are seated perfectly inside of the wheel and didn't get slanted during installation or lug bolt tightening.

If no trouble spotted, rotate the wheels front-to-back, and see if the vibration moves to the rear axle. If it does, it's one of the wheels+tire combos on the rear axle. If it doesn't, there is an issue with the front axle mounting surfaces - hubs or rotors.

Now rotate just one of the wheels from each axle back-to-front. Now you will find out exactly which wheel is giving you the hard time.

HTH,
a

 

What do you mean by "non-hub centric rings"? Centering rings that are the wrong size?

 

Sorry, I mis-wrote.
I meant to say "I avoid non-hub-centric wheels".

Basically, any wheels that are not custom build for the given hub bore. Rings add the level of complexity that sooner or later leads to undesirable outcomes, especially if you mount/dismount wheels multiple times throughout the year.

YMMV,
a