Pardon the pun. I bought my set two years ago almost for $346 shipped and one had horrible axial runout. You know, the side to side shimmy. I got another one. It had a flat spot. Sent it back and I got another one. Still had some vibration, but nowhere near that at first. I drove around for a year or so and decide I still should have a smoother ride. I got another wheel and told Discount Tire to replace whichever wheel spins the worst with my new wheel, which spun ultra-smoothly. I still have some vibration. I think either the kid took off a wheel which was not the worst or I'm getting vibration from all the wheels. But they all seemed to spin fairly smoothly when he was checking them out. I'm just wondering what other folks' experience has been.

 

1. Go to a shop where the owner is actually working on the floor. Not high school kids paid $5/hr who couldn't care less about the quality of their work.

2. You need a Hunter balancer with road force. Its pretty specific. Don't settle for any sort of a standard balancer. It won't work. A RF balancer applies force to the tire as it spins to duplicate road conditions. It can sense the high spot in the rim, low spot in the tire, and instruct the operator to shift the tire around to match those spots together. It can measure the amount of lateral pull on each tire and suggest the best mounting positon for each tire in the set.

3. If that doesn't work you may have brake issues. Runnout in the brake rotor can cause a shimmy. See if anyone has a machine that will cut rotors while they're mounted to the hub to ensure that hub excentricity is worked into the rotor cut.

 

Thanks. Well, I'm not thinking it's the rotors. Has there ever been rotors so bad that they affect the ride even when you're not braking?

 

hubcentric rings?

 

Hmmm. Never thought about those. But it seems that these wheels fit just the same as the original 16 inchers. But tell me this: Do you guys think these 350z 18 inch wheels are so sensitive that a bump on the curb would bend them just enough to give me some annoying vibration? Cause when I watch the wheels as the tire folks spin 'em, they all looked pretty darn solid. But I was just thinking that if any wheel/tire vibrates enough for me to feel it, surely I should be able to see it when it's spun on the machine.