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I have had an aluminum wheel where the circle of bolt holes was not concentric with the outside of the wheel. This will not show up during balancing as the machine used to balance uses the small center hole as a mounting point. It drove me nuts, rotating, balancing, checking suspension parts, aligning. One day the right rear wheel came off and passed me. The mounting holes got slightly bigger when it came loose. That elininated the problem. very strange
I have a similar problem on my car. I had new tires put on 6 months ago. I just had them rotated and balanced. Now there is a slight shimmy. Do you think this will calm down when the wear evens out?
I have a similar problem on my car. I had new tires put on 6 months ago. I just had them rotated and balanced. Now there is a slight shimmy. Do you think this will calm down when the wear evens out?
No. Take it back.
Logically, how can tire wear "even out"?
It's a round object. All parts of a round object usually wear evenly. So how many months does it have to wear before it could start becoming close to being "even"? No matter what the tire shop tells you. Sorry. Imo.
Yeah, if you are sure the balance is right, and there are no defective (loose, worn) front end parts, and you have done Franklyn's trick with the screwdriver (or you can just jack the wheel barely off the driveway or garage floor) what you are probably looking at is a "hard" spot in the tire, technically I think it's called radial conformance or something like that, high-end tires have 2 marks on them, a yellow circle at the lightest point, and a red triangle at the point of least (or maybe it's most) radial force. If your wheels have the correct match mark for the triangle, you mount the triangle to the match mark. If not, you put the yellow circle next to the valve stem (that part I'm certain of, since it's what I do on my old rigs).
Frankly you usually see these out of round and hard spot problems in lower-end, ie cheap tires. Cheap tires are really not much of a bargain in the long run - and poor tires can really ruin the handling of a good car, while on the other hand good (and not necessarily the most expensive!) tires can make a noticable improvement in a more humble ride.
Tire Rack has an excellent troubleshooting flow chart on their website, along with a lot of information and opinions on the tires they sell.
Repeating myself, but I now mount and balance my own tires at one of my car guy buddies' garage. I always mount without scratching my rims, and I balance, generally, to +/- one gram. As in, 1/28th of an ounce. The "pros" just can't be arsed to work to this standard.
You have no idea how smooth your car can be till you do this.
Forgot to mention, if you have steel wheels, a meathead with a high-torque air wrench, over-torquing and not using the proper torquing pattern, instead going around clockwise or counterclockwise, (CBA again!) can warp the wheel and/or the brake disc. Not to mention, good luck getting the wheel unbolted to change a flat...
from PA here's a link to Tire Rack's page on ride confirmation (smoothness). I forgot to mention to make sure your tires have a chance to warm up two or three miles, first.
If it started when the tires were rotated it sounds like it was one of the rear tires to me.Try putting more air in all the tires and see if it gets less shimmy.I have seen tires that passed the exact hunter test shown that had to be replaced but showed no problem on the machine. That solved the problem in these cases.Even race cars get tires with problems and they are screened very well and actually carefully made.
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