Quote:
Originally Posted by BMRLVR
It sounds to me like one of your wheels may be bent or out of round.
If a wheel is not "True" you will never be able to balance it perfectly!
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Yes and not necessarily. Side to side runout that is not excessive does not affect balance (according to Discount Tire), but causes high-speed vibration indeed.
Here's my story. My car drove almost perfectly before dismounting tires, powdercoating wheels, and remounting tires. My car was parked the whole time while that was taking place. After testing the car again, now it vibrates slightly after 70 mph. Going back in time, I could feel sometimes a very slight vibration at speed on certain roads since new, but it wasn't objectionable at all. Now it is, although not too bad (only got it up to 90, but could feel getting progressively worse). Wheels were not dropped or anything, and I know the offending tire is one that a different guy mounted (scratching my freaking wheel) and balanced, and I saw a 0.25 on the Hunter machine and told the guy why he didn't zero it, and said he had moved the weights (but he never ran it again to confirm). Will remove wheel tomorrow and have them check it, and also see if a polish the guy was going to bring removes the scuff, but I know it won't. It's not too bad, and couldn't have caused any defects, but wheels were just painted, and the a-hole said it was already like that, when the rub was obviously caused by the machine's arm that the bozo didn't adjust right initially. Oh, and he had the nerve to charge me full price.
Anyway, this same guy called me to the machine to show me the right front wheel had runout, and told me he's often ssen that on BMW wheels, and it shouldn't feel too much (he was right). That leads me to believe it's been like that since day 1. I'm hoping the wheel still shows 0.25 out of balance, and it can feel like before. But the wheel definitely has runout.
Does anybody know for a fact what's the acceptable spec? And at almost a year old (4.2K miles), would a non-selling dealer replace a wheel that was painted?
At least I know for a fact the car is fine, since I just parked it after a trip. There're other sources of a 'shimmy', so glad it's not the steering, suspension, etc. If wheels balance to zero on a Hunter machine, what some of us are experiencing is wheels with too much runout folks
. I'm going to get mine checked for balancing tomorrow, and report back. Hope we can get our wheels replaced if runout is out of spec, but somehow I doubt I'll be successful. Take care folks.