Well, I'm hoping maybe some of you have an idea on whats wrong. To make a long story short, I have a 95 max and when I bought it, it had the discusting honey comb 15 inch wheels on it. Yuck! I purchased a set of 17X7 Montegi MR7 Wheels and 235-50-17 tires. This made the car ride terribly. After 40 mph the car would shake and the steering wheel would shake back and forth. After talking to some "professionals", I was told that the problem was that Montegi MR7s are multifit wheels (fits toyotas, nissans, bla bla) and even after having the wheels perfectly balanced, they were still not fitting right on the car. 3 Days ago I purchased 17X7 2001 Maxima wheels and had the same tires mounted on it. Guess what, it still shakes! Not to the same degree as the montegi's but it is still shaking. Am I doomed to put back on my honey combs?? Also, 3 weeks ago I had the tie-rods and bearing replaced so I know its not that.

Thanks for all your imput....
3rd set of rims and still shaking!

 

You don't shake with the stock rims right?

 

Nope, it doesn't shake with the stock 15 inch rims..

 

Did you balance the Maxima 17x7s?
You mentioned you balanced the 1st set, but not whether you balanced the Maxima wheels. Fact that it got better by switching wheels could be an indication that the Montegi set that you had might have had a problem.

Have you done wheel alignment too? You are changing wheels, so I dunno ... might be necesary? Hope a wheel/tire expert can help out with this question whether alignment is necessary with different wheels.

 

"using the same tires". Your tires could be out of round. Would explain why the 15s didn't shake but both 17s did shake. It would also explain how repeated balancings didn't help.

 

Do the rims require hubcentric rings? Without those, even perfectly balanced rims will shake. Get them balanced with a Hunter GSP9700. If they are still shaking with proper hubcentric rings and road force balance, then look at the tires as the problem.

 

I agree with this, sometimes tires balance out okay but are still out of round (so I've heard).

Also, you said "Montegi"!

 

even tires that are perfectly balanced but out of round will cause shaking. you said you used the same set of tires and the shaking is still there, swap them out. also why did you go with the size 235/50r17 as apposed to 235/45zr17. what brand/model tire did you use?

 

Sounds like you have a tire problem. Low profile tires are very suseptable to aquireing flat spots. I would go with a new set of tires and have thaem balance on a machine that can measure road force variation like the machine that mzmgt mentioned. Any machine that has a big roller on it which puts pressure on the wheel has it. Any reputable tire shop should have the hunter machines. That is if you wan't to stay with 17"s.

 

While spinning the wheel on a balancer look for tire hop. Sometimes you can cure that by dismounting the tire and rotating it 180 on the rim. There is also a mode which most balancers have which is called
"tire - rim" matching. Basically you just balance the wheel first, then the tire and wheel. Then the balancer tells you which way the tire should be mounted on the rim - time consuming, but sometimes worth it.

I had a similar vibration - I balanced the wheels on three seperate occasions with no luck. I finally just spent some time tire/wheel matching and got it right.

 

I had the same problem before. I took it to 7 different places and had the wheels balanced. Still shook bad. I drove 2 HOURS to a place a friend reccommended (in East Texas) for an alignment. After taking it out of the bay, I did the longest burnout and fast run down the street, NO SHAKE! I drove home at 80-95 and NO SHAKE AT ALL! It all happened after I got my Konigs. HTH

 

Why did you change your tie rods???