Vibrations when cruising on hwy - already got alignment and balance done?
#17
Yes I had it aligned at the dealer and then at Sears on a special hunter alignment rack that is supposed to be all that and a bag of donuts....it steers straight....something seems slightly off balance .....I had the wheels balanced and the rotors are the good centric ones supposed to be mill balanced and all. I am wondering at this point if I don't have a bad hub or a bad passenger side strut.....
#18
Administrator
iTrader: (9)
Are you absolutely sure those unidirectional tires are rotating in the right direction? That happened to me once with snow tires. Drove me nuts for weeks.
If you've ruled out everything tire, wheel and hub... it's entirely possible your axle is bent. That also happened to me once, but like 30 years ago. After months of complaining about a brand new Firebird, they put it up on a lift and walked this measurement tool up to the car floor to axle. Sure enough, it was slightly bent. Techs were shocked... particularly since they were almost at the point of calling me crazy (to my face).
If you've ruled out everything tire, wheel and hub... it's entirely possible your axle is bent. That also happened to me once, but like 30 years ago. After months of complaining about a brand new Firebird, they put it up on a lift and walked this measurement tool up to the car floor to axle. Sure enough, it was slightly bent. Techs were shocked... particularly since they were almost at the point of calling me crazy (to my face).
#19
Registered User
....
If you've ruled out everything tire, wheel and hub... it's entirely possible your axle is bent. That also happened to me once, but like 30 years ago. After months of complaining about a brand new Firebird, they put it up on a lift and walked this measurement tool up to the car floor to axle. Sure enough, it was slightly bent. Techs were shocked... particularly since they were almost at the point of calling me crazy (to my face).
If you've ruled out everything tire, wheel and hub... it's entirely possible your axle is bent. That also happened to me once, but like 30 years ago. After months of complaining about a brand new Firebird, they put it up on a lift and walked this measurement tool up to the car floor to axle. Sure enough, it was slightly bent. Techs were shocked... particularly since they were almost at the point of calling me crazy (to my face).
#20
Yes I had it aligned at the dealer and then at Sears on a special hunter alignment rack that is supposed to be all that and a bag of donuts....it steers straight....something seems slightly off balance .....I had the wheels balanced and the rotors are the good centric ones supposed to be mill balanced and all. I am wondering at this point if I don't have a bad hub or a bad passenger side strut.....
Update: Thanks for everyone's help. I took the rims back to the shop that powder coated them and they sanded the inside part that bolts to the car. Vibration is down significantly, but it's still there above 75mph.
Maybe bad tire? One of the four new tires I put on had radial pull, so it was replaced by Hankook for free. But I think it'd be quite rare to have two bad tires?
#21
Registered Member
iTrader: (2)
I bought my G with 30K miles and was already vibrating when over 70 mph. Had an alignment and balance done and it went away a little but was still there. Just had my car lowered on Impul springs a few weeks ago but haven't gone to get it aligned again. The vibration however is still there over 70mph and is worst then before I lowered my car! I will get one more aligment and balance and then take it to the dealer and see what happens.
#22
I had a vibration in my 05 Maxima due to the tires wearing unevenly. They called it "cupping". I had been out of alignment for a while which caused them to wear like that.
#23
Did the place that did the balance do road force balancing? That can help find cupped tires, lateral runout, etc. They can even sometimes tell if its the rim or the tire that is the problem.
#24
Registered Member
iTrader: (2)
I had a similar issue when i first got my G sedan in 2011. It was completely stock and had the same issue the OP and several others are talking about. Every time i hit 75mph or above, i would get the vibration issue and it used to drive me crazy. I lived with it since i don't do over 70mph most of the time. Fast forward one year later and someone vandalized my car and took a knife to my front right tire causing me to replace it with 2 new Hankook tires for the front (figured i might as well change both fronts). I then noticed that the tire that was punctured had a bubble right where the tread of the tire is and that what was causing the vibrations (only slightly). So i leave the shop figuring i solved the issue and i still had some vibration. So i bought new rotors and pads and that didn't help either until i got another set of new hankook tires for the rear and found the culprit, an even larger bubble on the rear ****ty stock tire. That thing was huge and i have been without any issue ever since.
#25
#26
Registered User
I have an 2013 M37X. Some time ago, don't recall exactly when, but now especially at first run with "cold" tires , I have a Shimmy like unbalanced wheels. I have the car at two dealers who have rebalanced and re-alligned the wheels. Its' weird since it can be worse on one day and better another. I'm told it's the tires (Michelins with 18" wheels - OEMs) which at a certain mileage ( I have 20K on them now) develop Flat spots which smooth out after driving a while. I could undertsand that if the car sat for days without driving, but not only Overnight.
Does anyone know if there is a TSB about this issue?
Does anyone know if there is a TSB about this issue?
#27
Registered User
Bad belts in the tire will cause a vibration. Hitting a pot hole can mess the belts up in a tire and it won't show. The tread tries to separate from the belts or the belts separate from each other. I had this happen before with brand new tires.
#28
Registered User
Road force matching
+1 on what Brizey said.
Find someone in your area who has one of these Hunter GSP9700 road force balancers and knows how to use it properly; link follows.
Hunter GSP9700 Wheel vibration Control System solves wheel vibration and tire pull problems that balancers and aligners can't fix
Familiarize yourself with how it operates because I've found that the "technicians" don't always understand how the balancer is supposed to work.
http://www.gsp9700.com/how/index.htm
The machine reads the radial runout dimensions around the circumference of the wheel along with the radial force around the circumference the tire. The operator then should rotate the tire on the rim to align the highest radial force on the tire with the shortest radial dimension on the wheel. The machine will tell him how to rotate the tire to align these two dimensions. He should then repeat the process until he gets the final radial force at its lowest value. This is where a lot of the operators fail; they do the process once and assume that they're finished. When I had this done on the wife's Miata by the local Discount Tire, they had to run each tire two or three time to get the lowest value. In the end, two of the tires read 1 pound (the machine apparently won't read 0), and the other two were 3 and 4 pounds. The car rode like glass when they had finished. After that, I always have this done when I get new tires.
If the operator knows how to do the process correctly, he (or she, don't want to be sexist here) should be able to get the final readout below 7 pounds for each wheel. That's considered adequate to remove any vibration due to tire/wheel balance.
The down side is that it usually costs around $100 to do the road force match and balance on all four wheels.
Find someone in your area who has one of these Hunter GSP9700 road force balancers and knows how to use it properly; link follows.
Hunter GSP9700 Wheel vibration Control System solves wheel vibration and tire pull problems that balancers and aligners can't fix
Familiarize yourself with how it operates because I've found that the "technicians" don't always understand how the balancer is supposed to work.
http://www.gsp9700.com/how/index.htm
The machine reads the radial runout dimensions around the circumference of the wheel along with the radial force around the circumference the tire. The operator then should rotate the tire on the rim to align the highest radial force on the tire with the shortest radial dimension on the wheel. The machine will tell him how to rotate the tire to align these two dimensions. He should then repeat the process until he gets the final radial force at its lowest value. This is where a lot of the operators fail; they do the process once and assume that they're finished. When I had this done on the wife's Miata by the local Discount Tire, they had to run each tire two or three time to get the lowest value. In the end, two of the tires read 1 pound (the machine apparently won't read 0), and the other two were 3 and 4 pounds. The car rode like glass when they had finished. After that, I always have this done when I get new tires.
If the operator knows how to do the process correctly, he (or she, don't want to be sexist here) should be able to get the final readout below 7 pounds for each wheel. That's considered adequate to remove any vibration due to tire/wheel balance.
The down side is that it usually costs around $100 to do the road force match and balance on all four wheels.
Last edited by chopper; 10-04-2014 at 12:14 AM.