Its been over a year since i bought rims from discount tire direct (dont do business with them, HORRIBLE customer service). Anyhow, the car has been vibrating the DAY i put these rims on (17x8 on 235/45/17). Offset is 45mm i believe. lugnuts i use are the ones that came with it...12x1.25

anyhow, the car has been vibrating constantly at around 40 mph, and then again at above 70mph. Sometimes the steering wheel shakes (side to side) above 70, and sometimes the car shakes, sometimes both. its really weird. been thru 5 balances now, an allignment, and I already had a new set of tires put on, and its STILL happening. they thought it was the hubcentric rings, which WERE missing (stupid discount tire bastards never sent them) and when they did send them i had them put on. didnt change the problem AT ALL. Various types of balances have been done, dynamic and static. Balancers find no problems with the wheels. Car didnt vibrate with stock tires on there...I have run out of ideas and its ****ing me off as my car hasnt hit the highway in over a year (it SUCKS to drive the car when its shaking constantly...NOT comfortable). What have others on here done to remedy their vibration problems. I've been reading up on other's similar problems, which have mostly been remedied with balances. not here! one person has told me its the lugnuts, but i realized that my lugs are the proper size to be used on my car! What should I do? Oh, by the way, Discount Tire Direct wont do anything about this whole thing as they say its already been a year (was a year this past feb), even though I have been telling them about this problem since day one (their answer was to get teh tires balanced here and there, etc.).

 

I would have the rims checked for out of roundness. You can balance a square wheel but it doesn't run very smooth. I have run into that in the past. You can do it yourself if you jack up the car and have a pin or very pointed object almost touching the outside edge of the rim supported by a brick or anything that will hold it in place close to the wheel and spin the tire very slowly and see if the distance up and down and sideways changes any. I have never seen anyone check for this unless you ask. They will balance etc but doesn't mean diddly if its out of round.

 

yes, so far, that is one of my guesses as to the cause of the problem. thanks for the tip on how to diagnose it...the place I bought my tires from is still "friendly" and willing to run little checks, etc. i will ask to see if they want to do it...any other thoughts?

 

Had this same prob with a set of wheels/tires from the tire rack on my MR2.

Turned out the rims were fine but two of the Bridgestone Potenza
RE950s were "out of round." The local bridgestone dealer replaced
them free of charge...about 15000 miles after i bought them...i thought it was the rims for the longest time, changed the hub rings etc...swapping the two tires out solved everything...let us know
how it goes...

 

Good idea vin I should have mentioned to check the tires as well, it certainly could be either.

 

Yes, I wrote originally about how I thought it was my Dunlop SP5000s that came with the rims mounted and balanced. Its been over a year, so those tires were wearing unevenly because Discount Tire couldnt tell me the proper tire pressure to inflate at the time. About three weeks ago, i dropped down about 800 bucks for a set of new RE950s, replaced all four tires...nothing has changed. so thats how i KNOW it MUST NOT be the tires or the car...

 

Did you get this solved? I have been troubleshooting a vibration on my Kosei K1s and finally got it taken care of. The main help in killing this vibration was getting the wheel balancing done on a
Hunter GSP9700.

This machine can tell the technician if the problem is with the tire or wheel. All of my wheels balanced 0.0 on an old style balancing machine. The GSP9700 found one tire that needed to be replaced (done for free under warranty) and found that the balancing was slightly off in two of the other rims.

If that doesn't solve your problem, try replacing your hub centric rings.

 

I remember back a while ago on the forums someone else had this problem and they solved it by getting hubcentric rings for their aftermarket wheels. Might be wortt looking into. Good luck.

Kevin

 

that was one of the first things I looked into...and indeed, the company forgot to mail hubcentrics out to me. However, after having them installed, the vibration didnt change at all! weird...i still have it and dont have much time to get it resolved...