clang1875

Was wondering if anyone could offer up some suggestions on fixing this issue I'm having. I recently purchased (a few months ago) some great 18" OE wheels - Hyper Black. Had them delivered to my house - then promptly took them down to Discount Tire and had Pirelli P7 all season plus tires mounted. Since then, I've had this persistent "shimmy" that is very slight - but is still there. It starts at about 65 mph. It is more noticeable on smooth asphalt roads. I've had DT re-balance the tires twice with no improvement. They re-mounted the tires once - also providing no improvement. DT suggested that I select another tire - and we just mounted those last Saturday (Michelin Premier A/S). I drove from Cleveland to Detroit on Sunday, and I'm still experiencing the shimmy at highway speeds. Very frustrating.

Additional information: I purchased this car (2004 LS430) in late October 2017. It had 36K miles and rode on 17" OEM chrome wheels that had 14 year old tires mounted. I wasn't a fan of the chrome wheels (or dangerously old tires) - so I immediately added blizzak winter tires to the chrome wheels. I had many long distance road trips with my 17" chrome wheel / blizzak combination - and the car was Lexus smooth on the highway. I add this information because I'm really becoming suspect of the OE Wheels.

Has anyone else had this issue with new aftermarket wheels? Does anyone have any suggestions?. I'm thinking about scrapping the wheels - and trying to find another wheel option? This really shouldn't be that difficult - but for some reason - it is proving to be a challenge.

Thanks.

Mbodall

Does your tire shop do road force balancing? Or just the regular free-spinning computer balancer?

Jabberwock

Have the wheels inspected - may have been repaired and put seriously out of round or balance. But it could also be one of the brand new tires that is bad - it does happen.

LS430inDE.

I understood he already exchanged the P7's for the Premier A/S's and that didn't correct the shimmy.

Clang---you said OE several times. Where did you purchase these original rims from? I'm confused because later in your post you said "has anyone else had this issue with new aftermarket wheels". "OE" is Original Equipment, while "aftermarket" are Chinese type knockoffs that look similar to the (genuine) OE item.

Was this a person or a company, etc? Any guarantee with them? I'll state the obvious and say move the 2 front rims to the rear and place the rears on the front and observe the results. Have you done anything similar to that? When they were balanced, did any of them take an excessive amount of weights? With what I understand so far, I'm looking at the rims as suspect.

LS430Lexus

I had a similar problem with my '03. It was solved by rebalancing the tires with a Road Force balance at Discount Tire (DT). Only a few of the DT stores in my area have the Road Force (RF) balance equipment. The first balance was done on regular equipment at a DT by my home and one of the tires were +- .50. The car had a shimmy starting at about 65 mph. I took them to a different DT with relatively new RF equipment. The crew seemed to have more experience and expertise, remounting and rebalancing the tires to +- 0. Problem solved, shimmy gone and extremely smooth.

I am a amateur but my understanding is that a regular balance machine just spins the tire. A Road Force balance machine has a roller that comes down to simulate adding the vehicle weight while the tire was spinning. Additionally, it could be a bent or defective rim. A good tire shop can also check that out.

Mbodall

This is correct. It is a far more sensitive and accurate way of balancing a tire/wheel combo.

TriC

I believe that "OE" is an aftermarket brand name and should not be confused with "OEM." IIRC, they sell look-alike rims at cheap prices. The OP probably just has a bad rim.

Mbodall

Ahhh yes, I think you've nailed it. "OE Wheel Distributors" makes a very cheap knockoff lookalike of the actual OEM wheel and sells them for $153/each, where as the real OEM wheel actually retails for $723/each. Unfortunately, clang, this is very much like those $300 turbo kits they sell on ebay (also from China) that will grenade a Civic's engine faster than you can say Vin Diesel. You get what you pay for, and there's no way you're getting anything close to a $700+ OEM wheel for $150. I wonder if they'll let you return them...?

onthelo

Just as a suggestion as most have said here make sure they road force balance at the highest level there are 3 different road force balance levels they can run the wheel/tire at. The most aggressive will pull out any faults in the wheel/tire setup and you can see it on the computer. Also they can rotate the tire to help obtain a better balance if they are "stacking" weight which is not the best either. Possibly one of the wheels it self is just out of round it can happen on those OE wheels. They are not OEM so the tolerance is not as high quality, usually those OE wheels are pretty good but the suggestion of a new tire seems odd. It sucks to have a shimmy I been there before.

Johnhav430

My BMW dealership told my Road Force is unnecessary unless there is a problem. Keeping them honest, I had 4 Pilot Super Sports mounted/balanced at an indie who does not have Road Force equipment, and no vibrations.

With that being said, I believe all the TR products when tires/rim are purchased are RF balanced. I have never had an issue with Tire Rack and I've had their products across 5 purchases of tires with rims. In touring the local Porsche shop, all their equipment was Hunter Road Force. Still, I don't believe that road force performs miracles....

From the above description, if the original wheels did not have any vibration, then I likely points at the aftermarket rims. I once had some rims where they did not pitch water and when it got below 32F, all kinds of vibrations from ice...my .02

RushNatU

clang1875

Good question - I will have to call the DT store that I've been working with - to see what type of balancing equipment they use.

clang1875

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I will try to answer all questions below:
1) I purchased these wheels from OE Wheel Distributors. They had good feedback on this site - and they cost roughly $600. They are not Lexus OEM wheels (I know this) - they are knock-offs of the 18" wheels.
2) Great comment on the Road Force balancing - I was not aware of this. I will have to reach out to DT that performed the work and inquire what type of equipment they were using. I think going to another DT - with RF equipment - is a great first step.
3) I know there have been several other people on this site who have purchased the same wheel from OE wheels distributors - have you had to use hub rings to get proper fitment?
4) The original Lexus 17" chrome wheels that came with the car - had no vibration with the 14 year old tires. When I had the winter tires installed - there was still no vibration over several thousand miles. The vibration only started when I had DT install new tires on these new "OE Wheel Distributors" tires.

I'll keep you all informed on my progress.

Mbodall

Well yes, it's generally unnecessary to RF balance unless you have a vibration after using a traditional balancing method... which is exactly the problem that clang is having. I've had good luck in the past with traditional balancing machines, as I'm sure the majority of the public has as well, but I've also had slight shimmies after balancing using non-RF machines that went away after using a RF machine.

Spdjnke