I got a new set of wheels for my 2005 GT, HP Racing EVO 18x8 front and 18x9 back with Toyo tires 245/40/R18 front and 275/35/R18 rear. I ordered online and were shipped balanced. I put in a 1/4'' spacer from Pep Boys. I installed them and took the car to Pep Boys to alignment and balance. They took 3 times to align it correctly but the steering wheel keep shaking at 65-75 mph. I took the car again to align at other place and balance them again without any solution.

Someone knows how to solve this problem? Could be the spacers?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Diego

 

I'm not familiar with spacers but I doubt that's your problem.

Sometimes tires and or wheels are simply not true and they can't be balanced correctly.

I had a set of gatorbacks a loooong time ago that would always shimmy at around 65 or 70 and I switched to BF Goodrich... no more problems.

I would guess it's either your wheel or tire... hard to tell though since both are new.

 

Is it a side-to-side shaking, or up and down shaking? Up and down is wheel balance or an out-of-round wheel or tire. Side to side is common when switching to aftermarket wheels. Factory wheels are hub-centric, most aftermarket wheels are not. You'll proabably have to switch to hubcentric spacers to cure the problem.

 

It might be brake rotor retainers. Check out this thread;

http://www.grabberorange.net/forums/...rmarket+wheels


Mark

 

The shaking is side to side, not up and down.

Thanks
Diego

 

I thought about the rotor retainer and I removed them already. Still shaking.

Diego

 

I got a set of AFS wheels and tires which also came balanced. At around 60 mph, I did sometimes get a back and forth shaking. A guy in my club is the service mgr at a BMW dealer and they have a state of the art balancing machine. One wheel needed balancing and since then, about 5K miles - no problem. My guess is one of the tires is out of balance. Worst case - bad tire or wheel

 

Pep Boys in most places do not have the skill for big tires.
Years ago I bought a set of nice big truck tires at a cheapo place.They balanced and rebalanced and still I got shaking. After 5K mi. and some uneven wear, I took them to a high grade shop. They balanced the uneven tires so there was no shake at all.

 

Could be a bum tire, did they try swapping the fronts and rears?? Sometimes they also have to completely loosen them off the bead, rotate them on the rim, and try again too.

 

what happens when you hit the brakes?...does it get worse?

 

This is the same problem I had when I put new wheels/tires on. The Mgr at Discount Tire here bought me new hub centric spacers to make up for not thinking about needing them in the first place.

 

I thought about the brakes before but the shaking is just when running from 65 to 75 mph. No shaking during braking.

Thanks
Diego

 

Anytime you develop a shake/vibration after just having tires/wheels, lets face it, it's related to what they did. I've resolved a weird shake on my car with stock wheels/tires by checking tire pressure. For whatever reason, I had one wheel that didn't like to hold air pressure. By evening out the pressure, the shake was gone. Now, you'd like to think that if you're spending big $ on wheels and tires, the guys you're buying from could get the pressures correct. That being said, it leaves the balance job and/or possible bad wheel somewhere. Most wheel manufacturers do a pretty good job with wheel balance, but unfortunatly, many shops don't do a good job on balancing. I would agree with previous posts. You're going to have to go back to them and insist it's wrong. When they say it's not let them know you're going to have a competent shop rebalance them and you'll be bringing the bill back to them. Their balancer probably needs calibration.

 

I ordered a set of hub centric wheel spacer specific for my Mustang. I will let everybody know if it works. If not I will take them to dismount them and re balance.

Thanks
Diego