I bought new tires from sears and they did the balancing as well. however the car shakes around 55 just like it does when the tires are off balance. they balanced it twice using different machines claiming the tires are perfectly balanced. one of their tech said that because i have after market lug nuts they make the wheels to vibrate since the lugnuts are diferent shape than OEM and don't make the wheel fit perfectly against the rotors.
is that BS ? or does the arguement hold some value ?
i had the same lugnuts for the past couple of years on after market 16inch wheels and never had a problem... any ideas ?

 

do you have Hub Rings on your wheels, that could be the problem other than that it has to be a balancing issue.

 

no rings. OEM wheels/ original size tires with aftermarket lugnuts.

 

I just bought my car with a shimmy that came on at 60mph. I attributed it to a wheel out of balance as well. When I went to get my wheels balanced, they noticed aunusual wear pattern on tire and said to go get an allignment.

When I went to get an alignment, they told me that they couldn't do an allignment, becasue my inner tie-rod on the drivers side was worn out. Where it connects was wornout, and caused there to be slop in the steering of that one wheel. An alignment was needed after I replaced the drivers-side inner tie-rod. Part price from NAPA was only $32.50, but it takes 3 hours to put in because they need to drop the steering rack to do it . The car has an after-market extended warrantee that is transferable from the original owner, but as we look at it, it says that the vehicle need to pass some kindof inspection first. We are now just going to get the car fixed under warrantee first while it is still in his name, and then transfer it to me after all the work is done. - Anyway - it might be a worn-out tie-rod end.

- just my two cents-


FC

 

I recently bought tires from Sears but didn't let them do the installation...because they admitted what I already knew. The machines they use are not good for high speed balancing. Take your car to a wheel shop.

 

turns out the wheel balancing machines at sears all are terrible.
i went back four times at different sears stores. they all balanced the tires again. first shop gave me the 'wrong lugnuts' crap after balancing them, the second one told me the first shop didnt balance it right, the third sears store rebalanced again and blamed the wheels to be bent asking me to change them.the fourth store told me the front suspension and alignment is causing this, the fifth and the last time at sears they told me all the previous techs didnt do it right so they balanced it again with no luck. the steering and seats vibrated with different pattern after every wheel balance.
at last I went to a local tire shop that i got the address off of tirerack.com
paid 12.95 per tire to have them balanced at the gsp9700 machine or is it gsp7900, one of these.
everything's fine now.
no need to change wheels or lugnuts !

 

As noted, get them match-mounted & balanced using a Hunter GSP9700 machine.

It will measure runout of wheel & tire, then indicate angular re-mount position to minimize total runout.

You can do a search for local tire dealers using the GSP9700 on Hunter's website, see

www.gsp9700.com

I had vibration problems for a long time, then cured them using the GSP9700. The next set of tires I buy is going to come from a dealer with a GSP9700 - that's how much of a difference it can make.

However, keep in mind that it is still important to get a skilled Tech using the machine - when I had mine done at a Toyota dealer, the Tech was not trained, and I finally had to help him figure out how to use it!

The BS about lug nuts causing vibration is just BS. The nuts are close enough to the axis of rotation that any small inbalance-related vibration they may cause is negligable compared to the overall tire/wheel assembly inbalance and/or runout related force variation vibrations. (Go ref. your basic Physics book about angular motion and centrifugal force etc.)

(And BTW, I originally trained as a mechanic and did tire mounting & balancing in the evenings for 2 years while training during the day, so phooey to the Tire Mounter who fed you a line of BS about the lug nuts! We didn't have the Hunter GSP9700 back then, but it sure would have solved a lot of problems if we did!)

Good luck!