I just replaced my S-lites with Rota D2's and noticed some steering wheel vibration at 50-70mph. The wheels were road-force balanced and the mechanic did put on some plastic hubcentric rings (although I'm not sure if they were the right size.) So, could the vibration simply comes from using wrong hubcentric rings if the balance was all good?
BTW, The wheels are mounted using OEM lug studs.

 

That's what it sounds like--hubs out of center. It won't take much to cause the vibration.

 

If you used platic hubcentric rings, replace them with metal rings.
Also, be careful when tightening the lugs to make sure the wheel
stays centered. I found I could get them fairly well centered with
the plastic rings if I was real **** about the progressive tightening
of the lugs. If, after getting metal rings, you still have the vibration
then suspect the wheel balancing.

 

Cheapest place I have ever found for metal rings.
http://www.discounttiredirect.com/di...riesWheels.jsp

 

it's probably not an issue with the hubcentric rings being plastic.

your wheel or tire is still out of balance or defective. ive used
wheels without hubcentric rings in the past and they did not
vibrate at all. those rings are more for convenience to center
the wheel onto the bore when you mount them on your car.

as someone said, our wheels are lugcentric by design.

 

Well, today I took the wheels out and the hubcentric rings were not in correct size (57.1-67.1 mm). I just ordered the correct rings but I still have to drive with this vibration for a couple more days.

 

It could also be a defective tire, possibly with a broken cord causing a bulge in it, or simply bad alignment - you can't necessarily blame the centering rings. The wheel/tire may be balanced, but still be out-of-round.

I've had two new brand-new expensive tires that were defective as delivered.

 

I'm still running the OEM runflats and could feel the vibration from all four wheels.

 

If you want to wait for your metal rings, that's fine but... If tomorrow were Saturday, I would suggest that you dis-mount and re-mount your tires "as is", and at least verify that the problem either disappears or sticks around.

I'm not ready to "blame" the plastic rings at this point, either,
Tatt

 

Well, I got my metal rings installed today and had my tires re-balanced. The car is a lot smoother now, but there's still a little vibration at speed. I also noticed some movements on the steering wheel when driving on rough surface at any speed (didn't happen with my S-lites). Do you think my wheels are still not centered, or could my runflats damaged from dismouting?

 

is2000- what offset are those Rota's? did you get a set made for the Miata or the set made for Civics? (ie: +42 to +48mm). you might be just getting tramlining...

 

They are +45mm.

 

humm... still not 100% balanced then....might be a defect.

 

i had the same experience with my bbs after install with hub rings. i found out that the wheel takes a while to center itself. if it does (after a few revolutions) tighten the lugs again. maybe you can look into this.

van

 

^^^ hummm? hummmmm... really? ive never had to do that.

i do re-torque, but not for straightening the wheel to the hub.

 

Just yesterday I was looking through a few month old edition of Roundel magazine (BMW Car Club of America pub), and in Tech Talk, someone wrote in with the same issue. The editor's answer was that if you can't get the wheels to align correctly with the correct hubcentric rings, they're never going to align correctly and as he said, they're junk (the wheels). The editor's recommendation was just to get OEM wheels so you can move on to bigger and better things. While that may be an easy answer, there's certainly hundreds of aftermarket wheel users out there that aren't experiencing the same issue. At this point, if it were me, I'd conclude that those specific wheels aren't going to align properly no matter what you do and I'd be looking for 4 more to try, or a refund so I could try something else. The latter being the preference.

The old way of alignment was using the lugs. In my opinion hubcentric wheels are awesome. I've never driven on wheels that use the rings, but I'd hope they're as good as hubcentric wheels that are cast to align correctly without the rings. All I can say is that my MINI has no vibrations at terminal speed with MINI R99s, and I guess I can attribute that to the MINI parts (wheels and hubs) which are designed to mate perfectly to one another.

 

Thanks for the suggestions .
Today I went to my mechanic and had him replaced the OEM lug bolts with BBS bolts. They actually helped eliminate the vibration on the freeway, so I think it was the OEM bolts not seated correctly.