I recently began getting a vibration once I hit about 60+mph. I have had all four tires balanced by three different tire places in the last month and even though that has helped some, it is still not fixed. I have the 19's with the OEM Goodyear RS-A's. Is it possible I may have a bad tire(s), bent rim, or something else? I have always had the tires balance and rotated when required. The tires have a little over 16k. Anybody with these tires and wheel size have/had this problem? Thanks for the input and help.

 

Have you tried getting an alignment? 16K without an alignment is a long time, even if the car drives straight, other components can be off.

 

i have the same annoying problem. I get it balanced and its fine for an hour or so then its back. I also notice that it is fine whenever the car goes up in the air. I had an oil change done at the dealership and it was fine for about the same time line. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but i remember reading somewhere that these tires develop flat spots when they sit for alittle bit. Maybe being in the air helps them "re-align", I know thats not the correct idea but there might be a little connection there. Either way I have heard of people who just replace the crappy tires and the problem usually goes away.

If you want to check if your rim is bent, put it in the air. Doesn't have to be high, just enough to get the complete tire off of the ground and allowing it to rotate freely, so your floor jack should suffice. Then with a stand or something similar attach a probe. Like a pencil on small tripod. Make the pencil just touch the edge of the rim. Then spin the tire, if it push's the pencil or pulls back you can be fairly confident that your rim is bent. Better than paying a dealer to check it for, I would confirm with them or a shop, but coudl save you a hundred bucks or so for the initial diagnostic..

 

Pretty sure it's your terrible tires.

 

yes also had an alignment done recently as well

 

i thought that too...possible they are getting worse as they wear??

 

lol ive got 25000 miles on mine and the insides of my front two have gone completely bald(yes i do rotate) i slip everywhere in the rain.

my vibration is probably 10x worse then yours

 

Yikes! I have the 19" Goodyears, and have 24K miles on them. They still have A LOT of tread left on them. I would say they are good for another 35k miles. I rotate and balance every 7500 miles. Sorry to hear about your problems, maybe its time for new tires.

My only complaint about them is that when it was 0F outside and it sat over night, i felt the flat spots for about 5 miles until they got warmed up. Which at that cold, i know I don't feel good

 

My first Maxima rode like it was driving on glass. My new one has vibrations at 60+ like yours. I'd assumed it was because my first wheels and tires were mounted/balanced by Tire Rack, and the new ones were done by Gateway. I've been meaning to balance them myself because i'm convinced the people at Gateway have no idea what they're doing. Doubt it's the tires since on the first Max i had Potenzas and the new one has Ventus V12s. Once i get them rebalanced and an alignment hopefully it goes away.

 

Bought '09 in June, 2011 with 35k. Didn't notice the vibration until that night at 75 mph. The vibration is bad at times, but inconsistent and ironically is worst after sitting for a few days. Nissan balanced the tire, but it's back in the shop today where they're trying to sell me 4 new tires. doesn't sound like i should buy goodyears...

 

I have to second the tire comment but keep this in mind. I got so fed up with the poor OEM 18'' RSA's (super loud ride, medicore ride quality, and vibrations above 50mph even after alignment and balancing) that I went in a complained extensively to my local Goodyear dealership. Called Goodyear HQ and got a case number and approval to take these tires off for something else. Since I got an adjustment and was going to pay dirt cheap, I went with the Goodyear Comfortred Touring tires which everyone has been raving and rating very highly about on tirerack.

Well, the ride quality is a little bit better and they are much quieter than the RS-As, but, and this is a big but, I am having 10 times worse vibrations/shimmy above 50mph then I ever did with the RS-As. So much so, that there feels like something is wrong with the suspension or tires when driving around 60-70mph.

Now, keep in mind, these are suppose to be the top of the line Goodyear tire right now and while I paid dirt cheap with my RS-A takeoffs, they still are not that cheap of a tire to buy outright.

I've been back in twice to the Goodyear dealer and have had them balanced two more times. That helped a little bit but its still severe. They say my alignment is okay and my suspension and the tires are okay as well.

I think its just that Goodyear does not know how to make a proper tire anymore. It's pretty sad but I'm just sick of them.

My last resort, is going down to my local tire shop that uses hunter balancing and alignment machines and have it done on them and see if that makes a difference. If not, I'm going to have my head explode.

When your RS-As run out on your Maxima, get Michelins!!

 

Bent rim as you stated yourself is a posibility, take it to discount and have them spin them and they will show you which rim it is. If it si a bent rim, until you can get it repaired etc have them put the bad rim on the rear passenger side of the car as the further the way it is from the front drivers side of the car the better.

 

thanks for all the input. i would love to dump the RS-A's but i would rather save the money and deal with the problem until i need new. Will go with either yokohama's or falkens.

 

Had similar issues. The problem was intermittent. It turned out that I had a slow leak in one of my tires.

 

I Have aftermarket 20s and was having slight vibration at 60mph also . drove me crazy, finally i took it to a good reputable tire shop(long distant tire) where a friend works..They took 1 1/2 hours and rebalanced all wheels. First they put on machine how they came off car to see how much each one was off. Then rebalanced. I have one rim that had some slight curb rash- this rim was way off balance, they tried balancing it several times an always took alot of weight to balance(we put this rim on pass rear just in case). so the tech not happy with it, deflated the tire and spun it to hopefully see that it resealed properly. After this it balanced out ! Any rims will balance out9(with more weight) its just the tech taking there time over and over to get it correct on a GOOD MACHINE.

btw i bought these brand new and when my friend installed them on a ok machine, they were never perfectly balanced.

 

Same issue on my max since day one. I do have the sport wheels. Took to dealer 3 times so far and they say the vibration I feel after 60 is due to low pro tires which is a bunch of crap. I just gave up and learned to live with it. I hate dealers.

 

As I started looking for something I'd seen before I found this forum is full of vibration topics. It seems that the bulk of them have pointed back to the tires either a balance or a rim problem. There are lots of complaints about the Goodyear RSAs but then others have felt they were ok. One guy did find something major: DapperGuy had problems at low speed and it turned out to be a hub bearing issue among others:

http://forums.maxima.org/7th-generat...l?ref=esp-link

Other's feel that the CVT has a vibration to it.

I can add a couple of ideas about tires where the odds for your problem point. One is some tires are sensitive to tire pressure. A lot of guys run theirs RSAa at 35+ psi. I ruined the ride in my old Explorer when I retired her to off road duty. I replaced my Michelins that ran smooth as glass to a street/trail tire that drives me nuts. If I run the pressure up though, they're not as bad.

In the distant past I've also had my tires balance on the car. I don't know if you can find a place that does this anymore but I had a silk smooth ride after doing it. This also might be a good way to see how the tire spins and detect rim/hub problems. Tires can also get out of round. This happens if they are run unbalanced for a long time. I've heard of shops that will carve them back to round. One other place to look for an out of round problem is along the rim where the tire seats. There's usually a bead line on the tire. Look to see if the distance between the bead line and the rim varies significantly. If it is, the tires not seated symmetrically with the rim and is running out of round.