Wheel Balance & Steering Shake

[357RS]

I have a problem with steering wheel shake after having the wheels refurbished.

The story:

• 4 year old Audi TT, all fine and completed a 2k mile trip to Scotland with no problems. 19" wheels running Michelin Pilot Super Sports in good nick.

• Had all the wheels refurbished which involved remove/replace the tyres and re-balance. I marked the tyres so I know that they went back on the same corner of the car but not necessarily on the same wheel.

• On the first drive after replacing the wheels I had steering shake at around 8* mph. A rapid shake but only small amplitude.

• Had the front wheels balanced again at my favourite local tyre dealer. No change in steering shake.

• Considered swapping wheels front to back but took the wheels to be checked on Hunter Road Force equipment. Two tyres rotated relative to their wheel and balance weights altered. The Hunter equipment also recommends on which corner to put each wheel and ironically it ended up swapping front to back on each side. No change in steering shake.

• Went back to tyre dealer and had the fronts balanced again, some small change to weights.

• No change in steering shake but I noticed that even minor steering input eg changing lanes on a dual carriageway reduced/eliminated the steering shake. Play in the steering? I'd hope not after only 30k miles. I suspect it's simply the extra side loading on the tyres that has this effect.

Any ideas on how to proceed from here please?

[gaz453]

my first thought would be a tyre(s) out of shape, but I take it that the shake wasn't there before?

[jetbox]

Is the mating face of the wheel where it bolts to the hub painted?

I have had this before, the wheel then runs slightly out of true

[Megaflow]

Bearing in mind all of the wheels seemed to have been tried in different positions and the problem is still there, we are looking for a common problem with all wheels or a problem with the car which has coincidentally appeared at the same time. So I reckon jetbox has got it, painted mating faces, the wheels where powder coated weren't they?

[357RS]

Yes the wheels were powder coated and despite me indicating otherwise, that included painting the hub mating face, the centre bore and the mating faces for the wheel bolts.

I anticipated that this paint would cause a problem so I cleaned off all the unwanted paint before the first fit of the refurbished wheels.

The car had sat on stands while the wheels were being done so a fault developing was unlikely so I went back to the wheels and their fitting.
I removed each one, re-cleaned the hubs including the centre spigot, re-cleaned the wheel mating face and re-applied a thin film of Copper Slip.
I also re-cleaned the centre bores of the wheels finding that I'd previously skimped a bit on one wheel which was a bit tight on its spigot.

The wheels went back on the same corner and in the same orientation relative to the hub as they came off.

The result? No steering shake! That's good but it's hard to be certain what was the cause of the problem.

The wheel with the poorly cleaned centre bore had been on both front and back on the same side and the steering shake occurred in both cases.

The wheel bolts were properly torqued up each time. Perhaps the clean up was the cure?

Thanks for your comments.

Edited by 357RS on Sunday 1st September 10:55

[nsa]

Strange that cleaning the wheels and hub faces sorted it. I would have suggested one or more wheels were not straight.

I have the same issue over 100mph on track. I'll get the wheels off and check this weekend. Thanks for the update.

[Matt Seabrook]

Anybody that knows about balancing would not be surprised that cleaning the mating faces and hub centre bore could fix this problem. I have a very fussy garage customer that I do work for and he brings Porsche, Ferrari, Astons etc in for us to balance and one of the job we do before balancing his wheels is to clean up all mating faces. We are the only place he trusts to get this right.