Steering wheel vibration

[Jan T]

Just fitted new CR5000s on 15'' R300 wheels and had them balanced BUT now have moderate steering wheel vibration at speeds over 70 mph. I am assuming this is down to a poor balancing job but anyone got any further thoughts/advice?

Thanks in advance.

Jan

[Trevor Newman]

check the wheel nuts are tightened

 

also if you have those stupid 2 piece nuts that came with my car, ensure the tyre monkey didnt drop the beveled washer thingy

[stevefoster]

I get this and it's not balance or wheel nuts.

For me it depends on road surface. Some surfaces (a few) no vibration most surfaces vibration.

I put it down to the tyre construction and the quick rack.

I run +/- zero toe on the road.

 

 

 

Hants (North) and Berkshire Area club site here

My racing info site

here

 

 

 

[MartinS]

Hey,

 

I saw this and thought I'd mention that I thought my wheel wobble was down to road surface and in the end it wasn't.

 

I used to get intermitant wobble, which for ages I thought was related to surface quality, until last weekend. I was driving along a very nice long smooth slightly curved bit of road, and noticed my wobble phased in and out as I was going along (at intervals of around 20 seconds at ~60MPH.

 

What I realised was both wheels were unbalanced, and as one wheel was turning slightly faster than the other, the wheels would wobble in and out of phase, resulting in a smooth and then quite wobbly steering wheel.

 

Went to my local KwikFit to get the tyres balanced, and both wheels were 15g out!

 

Now I have no wobble at all at any speed. *thumbup* Horrah!

 

😬

 

Thought you might like to know.

 

M.

[frankyknuckles]

I've had problems since fitting CR500's on my 13" rims. One tyre was shot, it had a very bad wobble in it and was replaced under warranty. I have had to have wheels re-balanced twice since fitting, both times following track days (because of vibrations at various speeds). It is thought that the tyres move on the rims and hence go out of balance.

 

www.R300.net

[Myles]

...the hmmph* thread was started because a local brought his CR500-shod car round due to steering-wheel wobble...

 

You could see the OSF tyre wobbling away at the relevant speed...

 

ISTR my CR500s did the same thing - but I've not had them on the car for the last year+

 

I'll be seeing the chap on Wednesday to find out if swapping the wheels f->r made any difference.

 

 

 

Project Scope-Creep is live...

 

Alcester Racing 7's Equipe - 🙆🏻™

 

Alcester-Racing-Sevens.com

---

[MartinS]

Hey,

 

Annoyingly (and to contradict my earlier post) enough I still seem to have this problem where I can't get rid of my steering wheel vibration at speeds >70mph. The last person to try and fix this was James Whiting, and he claimed both the fronts were a far amount out (same as everyone has said from memory).

 

I think it's still wheel balancing as the vibration comes and goes at the same speed, same surface (just both wheels going in and out of phase when turning corners I believe).

 

Is it possible that some alloy/tyres combinations are just impossible to balance correctly using the sticky weights, due to design or manufactoring faults? Or am I going down the wrong track assuming it is the wheels that are causing the vibrations?

 

I'd love to get this fixed as the long drive to Le Mans is far less enjoyable with the vibration going on!

 

Martin Saunders

ohh, is it upgrade time? :)

[andy couchman]

Try pumping the tyres up to 50psi first (I would go to 100psi but that may not be safe!) leave them at that for a few mins and then let them down to 18 or whatever.

 

Sometimes tyres do not seat properly, especially if only pumped up to 7 pressures initially. Also, tyres usually have a paint mark that should go by the tyre valve and a lot of tyre fitters ignore this. So, if pumping the tyres up doesn't work, try getting a tyre fitter to remove the tyres and then re-fit them with the valve mark by the valve.

 

Cheaper than balancing!

 

Good luck.

 

Andy

[sjmmarsh]

Jan

 

Remember that wheel balancing just makes sure that the weight is evenly distributed around the axle - it doesn't make sure that the wheel is perfectly round. (Think about it - you can balance a square wheel).

 

It may be that the tyres (or rims) are out of round? (jack them up and see whether they are noticeably out of true as they spin round). I think the cure is to reposition the tyres on the rim - the coloured dots on the sidewalls tell the fitter where the heavy point of the tyre is and this should go next to the valve.

 

Steve

[MartinS]

Well, the result is with Neil's wheels there is no wobble (or very occasionally a very slight one, totally liveable with), which makes me conclude it has to be the balancing on my prisoners.

 

I've taken the wheels back to be rebalanced. Somehow though I have absolutly no trust that they'll come back any better than they went, as so many different places have tried to balance my wheels and failed (inc. James Whiting, although to be fair he came the closest). I've also swapped the front and backs, so I doubt it's a fault with one of the wheels, unless there was a dodgy batch?

 

Thanks very much for the advice on the tyre dots, I didn't realise tyres had markings like this. When I collect them tomorrow morning, I'll take a look.

 

Cheers!

 

M.

 

Martin Saunders

ohh, is it upgrade time? :)

[charlie_pank]

I had a problem like this for ages - in the end it turned out to be a balancing problem. Had to go back to the tyre-fitters several times to get it right though. Pumping up to 50psi + to seat them sounds like I good idea to me.

[MartinS]

Oh, I think this tyre place is going to hate me soon. I'm going to pick them up tomorrow, but meanwhile I found this on the toyo site:

 

http://www.toyo.co.uk/uploads/TTT_116.pdf

 

So, being the nice customer I am, I phoned them up and asked them to double check the yellow dot was aligned with the valve. The guy came off the phone, and I'm sure I heard a 'ohhh, that's what that dot means' in the distance

 

If they aren't balanced after this, I'm going to print this doc out and take it with me 😬

 

M.

 

Martin Saunders

ohh, is it upgrade time? :)