Entropy

iTrader: (1)

I have read posts on this board in the past trying to solve my vibration problem and came to the realization that there were a lot more people out there experiencing this problem than I would have thought.

I have been fighting with this issue for 120,000 miles now. Countless balancing, alignments, rotations, and even new rims and several sets of tires later... I finally enjoy driving at these speeds. (The "fix" in the past has simply been to exceed these speeds considerably)

Before a recent trip to Florida, I took the car to yet another shop for a rotation and balance. The rotation was needed, but the balance was just another in a long list of failed attempts really. As usual, the balance did not help, and if anything, it just changed the speed that the vibration was prominent at by 5MPH or so.

I drove to Florida and suffered through 1200 miles of vibration.

I was staying with my Dad, and while we were BSing on the back porch, I mentioned the problem in idle chatter. After hearing all I had done to solve the problem (I forgot to mention the Maxspeeds and KYBs sitting on my living room floor, which were a long shot) he suggested a local shop called Bobo’s Tire.

You can only imagine my reluctance to go anywhere within 100yds of a place called Bobo’s tire with my car.

Anyway, to make this already long story shorter… I took the car to Bobo’s tire. They took the wheels off and balanced them, then they trued the tires, and then they put them back on and fine tuned the balancing ON THE CAR at 90MPH (most shops around here only go up to 55MPH anyway like Sears) using a small machine that rotates one tire at a time on the car.

After this whole process, (which ran me a grand total of 63 dollars) my car literally feels like a different car. At any speed, she rides and feels like she just had a 10,000-dollar ride comfort upgrade.

When I spoke to the shop about my problems, they blamed it on the wheel locks and said that there were small marks on the wheel that I had to watch when removing my wheels if I wanted to keep the balance like that.

I do not know why I have never heard about this process, but I do know that the shop dealt mostly with Semis and large vehicles (Campers etc…).

Some other people have solved this problem on here through various means – but this worked for me and I wholeheartedly recommend finding a shop that will do this.

DAREN

iTrader: (3)

road force variation. high spots in the tire under load.


i have had a similar "balancing" problem for about 2 years. so after countless rebalances i finally decided to buy new wheels and tires. b4 this last resort i decided to do one last rebalance. off to work i went and at the end of the day when all the customers were gone i pulled my car into the bay. i balanced all 4 wheel down to 0 - 0, now hers's the difference. i tightened all the lugs down by hand until they were snug. then i got the breaker bar tightened them fully. now the problem is gone. all the other times i took my wheels of i re-installed them with an impact gun (sometimes torque sticks if they were available).

my problem had something to do with the way the wheels wold seat if i installed them with and impact gun. the only piece of mind that i had during all this was that i know proper care and detail was taken on the numerous rebalances. i was the one who did the work. most times the wheels werent more than 1/2 oz off.

Big_Ham

iTrader: (1)

Tightening your lugs more will do nothing for road force variation. In fact, there is seemingly nothing one can do about RFV. RFV Is like hard spots in the rubber your tire is made up of. I learned this on my last trip to Nissan service. The guy I was dealing with was a 25 yr. veteran that knew his stuff. He showed me the printout and how my rear driver's tire (new tires BTW) was out of spec in RFV. He showed me the graph and I figured that I couldn't possibly feel it. Well, set your mind to it and you can feel that tire thumping - ever so slightly. He says he tells tire shops he is going to measure that and if it's out of spec, he expects a refund. He also says he only found one shop that would actually keep good on that word.

I think the problem Entropy was experiencing was not having anyone in the area with a digital balancing machine. The Nissan dealer I'm talking about has this $10k-$20k machine that digitally stops itself at the point you need the weight and then respins to make sure. It measures RFV by pressing a large roller against the tire while it is spinning.

All this talk about balancing reminds me just how OUT of balance my tire is since I had to get it patched from the damned construction around here ... ******* small local yokels messed up my perfect balance.

Entropy

iTrader: (1)

I don't know what kind of machine they all had... I took it to Tires Plus, a local Alignment Shop, two different Nissan Dealers, Waukegan Tire, Sears, and another local shop that said they were good up to 70MPH and I wouldn't be able to find anywhere better... they failed too.

Because of a post I read on here, I did find a shop locally that had some kind of fancy smancy balancing machine. I never took it over there though. I was nearly given up at that point.

I know the shop I took it to finally (Bobo's Tire) had one of the regular balancing machines with the hood and everything... then when they balanced it on the car I couldn't really see what he was doing other than playing with what looked like a timing light and a few reflectors.

If this vibration were caused by some inevitable road variation stuff, why haven't I ever had this kind of problem with any other car? My Yota on 33s rides smoother at 85 than my Max did, and so did my Nissan on 31s, and even my '80 Yota on stock tires.

As far as Torque specs go... no one touches my lug nuts with an impact wrench. I watch - the place I had it done at before I went on this trip hand torqued them with a Torque wrench and then had me come back after a 100 miles so they could do it again while I was in the car.

All this after new tires, rims, rotors, pads, bearings, a new steering knuckle, and I was about to change springs and struts.

(Incidentally, I do think one or both of my rear calipers is starting to stick)

Toolrocks

iTrader: (1)

I've known about on the car balancing for a while but have been hesitant thinking that it just masks a more serious problem. I could be completely wrong in my thinking but if they can balance the rim and tire alone and then put it on the car and experience a problem, that makes me think something is wrong w/ the car. Are the driveshafts weighted/balanced and can they get out of balance, what about out of round rotors, bad wheel bearings? Just some questions for thought. Glad to hear your problem is resolved. I too may have this done.

DAREN

iTrader: (3)

i should have written the post a little better. i was trying to say that i think his (entropy/threadstarter) problem was RFV.

i was experiencing a vibration problem that was remedied by re-instlling the wheels so that they were properly seated, rather than the countless rebalance attemps. mine are lugcnetric wheels with shank style lugs. the wheels have 72mm bore so hubrings were also used.

i differ with you about the RFV and mnt/dsmnt of wheels. if we can agree RSV is a overall highspot (runout) in the tire and wheel assembly under load. if somebody puts a wheel on your car and it is not properly seated, lets say off-center towards 2:00 clock. everytime that point on the wheel hits the road it would nudge the suspension upwards. the opposite could happen, that the tire would throw itself upwards everytime said pont hits 11-1:00 clock. the wheel/tire assembly itself could be in perfect balance but if it is mounted offcenter the highspot (runout) will have more inertia/weight than any other spot on the assembly. in the drivers seat you would pick this up as a vibration.

most shop balancers are set up to measure the weight highspot of the tire and wheel assembly and thus compensate with balancing weights.

the other part of the equation is the runout high spot of the wheel, tire, and the 2 as a whole assebly. when a tire is mounted to a wheel the highspot of the tire should be mounted to the lowspot of the wheel, to insure minimal runout of the whole assembly. the highspot on a tires weight and runout are usually marked with seperate colored dots.