Just curious, who here has 16" rims? Im just ordered two pairs of michelin tire for my 16x7" rims. My question is this, i use to run 205/55/16 on em, now im going to run 225/55/16 on them. Could this be causing why my car shakes at 70 and up? My alignment is fine and i always check tire pressure asnd rotate them like they should be. Maybe its my rotors?

 

You need to get the wheels balanced. If you are lucky, all they will need to do is put some stick on lead weights on your wheels and the vibrations will be gone.

 

Hey Synki... I assume you have ABS on your car. When doing tire changes, you have to stick with the same size tire because the ABS system reads tire speed in relation to other factors. When you changed to a 225/55, your overall tire height just got taller. Although it probably isnt catostophic or anything, with ABS I never mess with the tire size. Oh yeah.... if you dont have ABS, forget what I said!!

 

could this be my problem too? I just got 4 new tires and at around 70-75 mph my steering wheel shakes. I am not sure if they did a good job on the balancing of the wheels, though. With the OEM tires, they were fine--but one thing that I did change with the tires is the tire size. I went from 205/65 to 215/60. The speed difference here is only less than 1% so I am not sure if this would throw off the ABS system also?

thanks. =)

Brian

 

I to am a victim of some wheel shake after installing some new rubber. Before the new shoes my wheel was rock solid at all apeeds. Now with new dunlop sp 5000 225/50/16 on stock 97 SE rims I have a very slight shimmy at 70 to 80 mph. I just called my installer he said it is a balance problem and bring it in and he will rebalance them. I will let you know if this solves the problem. To me there are not many things in life more irritating than a wheel shimmy.But I will say the 5000s are much much better than the stock Toyos.

 

Brian, that sounds like a bad balancing job. Truth is, its hard to get a good balancing job these days. Most shops have older equipment, and tire guys that make $6.00 an hour, so we know they dont give a f**k. About the ABS, the tire height change is probably something you will never notice.

 

thanks for the head's up. I made an appointment with firestone to go have the wheels rebalanced--and I know that even though the stock yokohama tires sucked, they never gave me a shimmy at 100+...
I'll let you guys know what happens and if the problem goes away afterwards.

=) thanks again for the tip.

Brian