Has anyone had problem keeping 20" tires balanced? The dealer balanced them on installation, I had them balanced again at about 1200 miles, again at about 3400. The last one was two days ago and this morning I noticed that there was still some vibration in the steering wheel. It didn't seem so bad today on the way home though. Gonna see how it rides tomorrow before I take it back. Just wanted to know if this was happening to anyone else? Ihave 20" American Racing Rogue's and Toyo Proxies if that helps any.

 

Has this gone on since you first installed the 20's? Is there a chance one of your wheel studs still has the factory retaining clip on it, and is causing the vibration you refer to? The factory rims have enough tolerance to function with the retaining clip intact, where lots of after market rims do not.....

Just a thought,
Mike

 

I've had these wheels on it since the day I drove it off the lot. So I guess you could say it has gone on since I first installed them haha. After a few days, I started to feel the vibration, so I took it to a tire place in town and they rebalanced the front tires. After that, it was good to go. Then recently it started to do it again, but not too bad. So I had them balance the tires again. One would think (hopefully at least) that a tire place would make sure nothing else was causing the vibration. But as a precaution, where are these retaining clips, could I see them without lifting the car?

 

You have to remove the wheels to see the retainers. Retainers are basically a lock washer placed on the wheel stud to keep the brake rotors from slouching as the car travels down the line before the put the rims on.What happens is people don't remove them when they get their wheels balanced so the rim does not sit flush on the rotor. Even though the tire is balanced and that keeps the tire bounce checked, the retainer adds side to side or wobble to the wheel which can come throught the steering and feel like an unbalanced wheel.

 

Exactly!! Could not have said it better....You may want to check this out. The tire place would have no way of making sure without a road trip, which they usually do not do for balancing tires on a machine....

Mike

 

Great, thanks I'll take it in and have them check this tomorrow. So if the retaining clips are installed, sound like I can just have them installed. Should I take it to the dealer or would any normal tire place know what I mean and take care of it?

 

Jack up your car in your driveway, pull your frontwheels off. If you see a clip over a stud then take a pair of dykes and snip it off. The clip is as thick as a soup can so they come off easy

 

dykes! yikes!
sidecutters?




[IMG]local://upfiles/17179/19933BEAF6D948AEBB2A44DE16D1EB67.jpg[/IMG]

 

I had same problem but some weights fell off and had to be rebalanced.

 

Thanks for the picture. I think I'm just going to take it to the dealer. Because if the clip is there, I want to rub in their face that they screwed up. Maybe they'll reimburse me for the tire balancing I had done. (Yeah right). Plus, I talked to one of the service guys at Sears tonight (NO! I didn't let them touch my car, don't worry.) They said it may need aligned too, so maybe the dealer did a crappy job aligning it after the new wheels. But I doubt they even bothered to do that. I appreciate all your guys help though. Will let you know how things go, it'll be a week or so though, I'm going out of town on Wednesday.