i just got the 18"s put on about a week ago and got 2 brand new 235/40/zr18 Continental Extreme tires and a brand new alignment. at first it felt great to have the rims back on, but then when i got going to about 55 mph on the way home, the steering wheel started to vibrate really badly the whole car just felt very unsafe. why would it do that? I have brand new front tires and a new alignment. any ideas??

 

It sounds like you have a wheel out of balance. If it vibrates really hard at highway speeds it's probably one (or both) of the front ones. Take it back to the shop that mounted them and have them balance all 4 wheels.

 

i did! that's the thing! i had it mounted and balanced and aligned. is there anything else i can do? i have kyb agx suspension, h&r springs and a eibach camber kit if that makes any difference. i want it to feel as smooth as possible

 

hrmm, other than the wheel being not balanced i cant really think of a reason why it would give you vibration, i would try and go back and tell the shop that something is wrong and to rebalance your tires

 

The people who work at those shops have been known to screw it up
I've watched them before when they couldn't get the machine to read right. (thats why i watch them always, they hate it when i do )
Sometimes those ballancing machines get screwed up too. Point is, the improper balancing can happen. Hopefully thats all your problem is.

 

you may need hubcentric rings

 

you can do what im doing,my max does the same thing had the wheels balanced. but when i get up to 60 it starts viberating real bad. tomarrow im putting new lower control arms with all new bushing and ball joint springs and struts, New CV shafts and have the alignment redone. If that doesnt fix it i dont know what will

 

It could possibly be 1 of 2 things. It is possible to buy new tires that are bad but theres a pretty slim chance that's the problem. Also since you have aftermarket rims they are probably using sticky weights. Whoever is balancing them may not be setting the balancing machine right. You have to set the machine to the right type of weights or it will cause a shake. When I worked at pep boys we had a few of these issues with new people working there. Or maybe the machine isn't calibrated. Try getting them balanced somewhere else and see what happens. Those are just some possibilities.

 

Go find a place that balances tires and wheels using "hunter gps7000" or "road force" balancing.

I had the same problems. Happned that one of my 18" aftermarket wheels was slightly out of round. anyways, fixed it. no more vibration.

Good luck. You can try you local infiniti dealership ... i think nissan might have that machine too. Honestly, its worth it. I think its a little more money.

I had my rims originally balanced by costco. it was cheap, but could not remedy the slight out of round issue.

-Anthony

 

I had a similar incident when I had one of those whole sale tire places mount my 19's. Free mount, balance, and alignment. I was your typical PITA customer watching everything they did to my car, man do they hate that. To make a long story short. I was driving my car home, and the alignment was all messed up. The Nissan emblem on the steering was reading sideways when I was going in a straight line. Needless to say I brought back the next day, guess what. The same kid who messed it up was working, and ended up having to realign the front end. I would definately bring it back and have them go through everything.

 

It could also be a bent rim. But since you just had new tires put on, I would start with the balancing.

Dave

 

Yea get that check asap, you dont want what happened to me yesterday and have your wheel pop out of your car. They used a power screw to put the bolts back in and it must of strip the bolts clean, I noticed the throbbing sound and soon as i pull over the wheel pops off and im off looking for a new hub, fender, and some where to take out the bolts out of the hub so i dont kill myself driving 30mph poor maxine

 

If the rings are missing you may very well have a rim that isn't centered on your hub. It's not easy getting larger non-hubcentric aftermarket wheels to mount up sometimes. You can jack the car up and loosen up the lugs. Then s-l-o-w-l-y by hand, tighten them down in a criss-cross pattern while spinning the wheel to make sure it's centered on the studs correctly. Even then, it could wind up slightly off, but it may eliminate most (if your lucky all) of the vibration.

 

Check your suspension first if everything is ok bring it back to get a balance at the same place for free. They did this to me when I bought 4 tires, got on the highway, 65 and up would vibrate. Brought it back after checking suspension, and they did the balance again on all 4. It was fine after that, just a PITA at the time not knowing if something was wrong. Good luck