Help with a wheel/tyre issue

[PooPoo]

I have a frustrating issue which I hope people can give some advice on. when doing about 70mph I get a strange, small vibration like sensation which makes my car unpleasant to drive. Now it's not really felt through the steering wheel or back of the car but I only really noticed it since getting new (cheapish) tyres 18 months ago. I hear you saying 'well that's the issue' but living in a county without motorways it took some months to get up to the speed which the issue was noticed. I've had the general altimax 225/45/18's checked at three different places, my wheels balanced by four different places and guess what, each one of them said they 'were out' and charged for balancing. The place where I bought the tyres from said they couldn't find any issue with the tyres or the wheels, because I thought they may have been out of round. Any suggestions will be welcome as I don't want to spend out on four new tyres if that isn't the issue. Regards.

[PooPoo]

I forgot to add, one wheel was noted as having 'a lot of weight' on it, but they couldn't tell me if the wheel or the tyre was the issue?. Having checked this wheel (ive swapped it out for the spare today) I counted it had 100 grams of weights on it, why would a tyre/wheel be so unbalanced? My plan of action is to rotate the spare around to see if that helps the issue.

Edited by PooPoo on Monday 3rd July 15:47

[cuprabob]

You don't say what the car is but on some VAG models the rear tyres are susceptible to tread stepping / sawtooth wear pattern which can give a rumbling / droning noise more pronounced at certain speeds and can give a slight vibration.

For the wheel with 100g on it you could have a tyre fitter rotate the tyre on the wheel by 180 degrees and rebalanced. Tyres have markings on them that are supposed to be lined up with the valve so that the minimum amount of balance is needed but sadly very few tyre fitters seem to bother.

[PooPoo]

Thanks, that's interesting regarding the tyre, I was aware they have coloured dots to account for balancing and assumed all places adhered to it. I didn't really consider 'saw toothing' as it occurred so soon after fitting the new tyres. Sorry my car is a Skoda Octavia vRS (estate) 2.0 tsi

[silentbrown]

Probably overkill, but this is interesting: http://vibrationfree.co.uk/our-services/wheel-bala...

Check the weights aren't falling off?

[Drive Blind]

The only way to 'debug' the problem would be with a known good set of wheels and tyres and to start swapping wheels/tyres about, however I would suggest 99% of people don't have this facility.

The type of issues you have, I've only had with budget tyres. Going out of balance, difficult to balance, using an excessive number of weights. I'm not in the habit of buying budgets but sometimes you're stuck with them for a while when you buy a new (2nd hand) car.

Anybody else drive the car? Can you be 100% sure it's not been heavily kerbed or pot holed?

If you don't want to splash out of 4 new tyres I would suggest burning through the fronts and buying 2 decent tyres. Also if you can, prior to getting the new tyres fitted, remove all the weights from the wheels and clean the wheels up.

[PooPoo]

No, no one else drives the car- I do live in the country side where some pretty nasty potholes appear from time to time, of course I've hit some of them but ive never suffered a problem (at the time) I've booked it in for a hunter wheel alignment, I think this will be the next cheapest option prior to new tyres.

[anonymous-user]

Buckled rim is most common cause of XS balancing weight - and will cause symptoms your describe.