Vibration at Highway Speed

switz

Member
:
2008 Mazda5 GT 5-spd manual
Last spring I purchased Toyo Extensa A/S (215/5-R17) for my Mazda 5. Near the end of fall I noticed a bit of vibration occuring, but had to change to my winter rim/tires becuase of, well, you know. I just put the Toyo's back on a week ago, rotating the rears to the front. So far they have about 16,000km on them from last summer. Now the vibration was felt in the steering wheel at speeds above 105km/hr and in my rear at lower speeds. I took them back to Tirecraft in Lloydminster and they reballanced them. Now, the vibration is reduced, but still there. At 110km/hr the wheel will vibrate for about 15 seconds, then it is smooth for 15 seconds, then vibrates then smooth.

I have a feeling that since the vibration moved to the steering wheel this spring, that there is one bad tire now on the front. Is it still an out -of - ballance issue, or something else? Out of round? Tread separation beginning? How can I (or the tire shop) diagnose this further? I'm assuming that the re-ballance was done correctly. This is frustrating.

Also, the tires were balanced with only weights on the inside and none glued to the inside of the rim like from the factory. Does anyone think this might be the cause? Has anyone had trouble getting new rubber on the factory rims to balance?

I hate tires :(

I know I've asked a lot of questions. Any ideas would be appreciated :)
 
I hear ya on your frustrations. This car is the worst i've ever had for being finicky about tires.

I was just saying on another thread how you have to make sure that the tires are ROAD FORCE BALANCED, not computer balanced. I asked my shop to run the tire again after the weights were put on to double check. You can ask for taped on weights and if they don't do that, go somewhere else.
 
So back to the tire shop yesterday. They pulled the tires off and none were balanced perfectly. So this time they used the sticky weights for the outside and hammer-on ones for the inside. It took more than one try to balance each wheel. Don't know why. The technician seemed to know what he was doing, although he said that one weight on the inside would have been fine. He couldn't explain, however, why the tires were out of balance from just 10 days ago.

Anyhow, to the sad ending of my story. One of the tires did show movement when it was on the spin balancer. Upon closer viewing, both the technician and I could see that the rim (and it was one of the front tires) was wobbling ever so slightly. Slightly bent rim. Not suprised it caused the vibration in the steering wheel this spring when I rotated the rears to the front. So the technician put the rim back on the rear so that I wouldn't feel the vibration in the steering wheel, but I can feel a slight vibration in my seat. Crap.

It's not so bad that I can't live with it for a while. I guess I'll have to price out a new or used factory rim (I hate to go used and get another bent rim). Or, it's time to get all new rims. Not sure what to do yet. 16" rims are the smallest that will fit over the brakes. Maybe I'll get new 16" rims and go for a slightly taller sidewall to cusions the rim from another bend. But there is lots of life left in the 215/50R17's I currently have :(

Any suggestions? Thanks.
 
Back