Vibration above 60 MPH with winter wheels/tires

I ordered Sport Edition Cup 4's from TireRack with Bridgestone Blizzack LM-25V's for my winter setup, and above 60 MPH they virbate quite badly. I called TireRack, they said to go get them rebalanced and they'd reimburse me for the cost. Again, nothing but amazing customer service from TireRack. So I go to Curry's in Chantilly and have them rebalance the wheels. I ask them to be very careful to not scratch the wheels with the wheel bolts, as it's a tight fit. I'm told they have a thin walled socket so there won't be a problem. Excellent. An hour goes by, then bring the car out and tell me that all the weights went back in the same place and the road force for all of the tires was about 10-12 lbs, which is not bad at all. I go out and look at the wheels, and of course they scratched all of them: After about a half hour of arguing with the service manager, who accused me of scratching the wheels and then trying to pass the blame onto them (because I went out of my way to warn them to be careful not to scratch them), and then later changing his story to saying that my brand new wheels had been refinished and that's why they are scratched. I got TireRack on the phone, straightened out that these are new wheels, and TireRack offered to replace all of the wheels because the shop said the finish on the wheels was poor. This doesn't seem very fair for TireRack, but I'll decide on Monday what to do. Anyway, I merged onto the highway on the drive home, and again when I get near 60 MPH, the steering wheel starts shaking quite badly, just as it did before. If I speed up to around 70-75 MPH, the vibration gets worse, but then when I slow down to 60 MPH, the vibration has mostly gone away. This makes absolutely no sense to me. My factory wheels didn't vibrate, so it seems obvious that there is something wrong with one of my wheels. Perhaps the hub of the wheel isn't exactly flat, and thus it's not sitting properly and causing a vibration? The wheels were road force balanced on a Hunter 9700, so it would detect if the wheel was out of round, but not if there was a problem with the hub of the wheel. If there was something in the suspension that could be causing this, what could it be? Worn control arm bushings? Ball Joint? The car only has 17,000 miles on it, so I doubt anything is worn out. It did sit a lot (about 3,000 miles driven a year), but that's not out of the ordinary. Any ideas? I'm leaning towards putting the snows on my factory 18" 5 spokes and then getting something else for summer. Thanks, - Anthony

was the place you went to able to road force balance them? i had the same problem with some new wheels this summer and i had to go back 3 times to get the balance right. the 3rd time they put it on the road force balance machine (i didn't know they had it) and it worked perfectly. our cars are sensitive to wheel balance, more so than most. the service manager said that the one wheel was off by less than 1/4 ounce, which caused the vibration above 65 mph that i had been experiencing.

Lot of winter wheel vibration posts of late. You did the right thing having them rebalanced. Couple of things though: Another owner found the load force balancing bad and a rebalance -- I forget if at another tire shop or at same tire shop -- found the earlier load force balancing out. Subsequent correct load force balancing found a 26lb (?) error in one tire and TR is I think replacing both tires. Another poster found the center hole in the winter wheels too large and the wheel not locating properly on the hub. I'm not sure what TR did in this case. Also, I've never run winter wheels/tires but I know summer ones sensitive to over inflation. Make that summer tires on my Boxster. I've never overinflated the tires on my 996 (Turbo). Be sure all cold tires are inflated to proper pressure. Buy a quality tire pressure gage and check tire inflation pressures with tires cold. Unlikely they'll heat up enough driving through snow. Now if you encounter a bit of nice warm weather and dry roads and are able to run at highway speeds the tires may build up some heat which may (may) result in vibration, but worry about that when and if it happens. Remember that a 10 F change in ambient temperature will result in a 1 psi change in tire inflation pressure so if the ambient temperature suddenly drops or jumps up the tire inflation pressure will need to be checked with tires at the new ambient temperature. Or the problem could come from something else. I doubt suspension, etc., cause summer wheels/tires ok. But a wheel could have something behind it between it and the hub which causes the wheel to wobble. You can have someone follow along side and view the car's wheels at the speed the vibration is present and perhaps see something. Or you can get tire shop to put car in air and spin each wheel and look for any runout of the wheel (at the bead) or the tread. Sincerely, Macster.

this doesnt work in your situation, but for others... if you get a bad wobble, look for packed snow or a spot of ice stuck to the wheel on the inside... taht will cause a big out of ballance thing... to the OP...that sucks they scratched your wheels and like you I have had to fight for what is something very hard to prove. GL with that one and it sounds more like the wheels dont fit the center of the hub? Can you just jack up one wheel at a time and rotate it.... have some stationary object on the edge (anything will work just so your eye can see a changing "gap")

Quotes source post: 7140021

All mine were pretty low though. I believe that if you are under 20 lbs, then generally the tire is OK. That was part of my thought as well, the bore on the wheel doesn't properly match the hub. These wheels are hubcentric, so no centering rings were required. I didn't pay too much attention when I was mounting the wheels, but the bolt holes seemed to line up perfectly. I am going to take the front wheels off and take a look though. Do you know what kind of wheels those were, or a link to the thread? One of my biggest pet peeves is misinflated tires. I have a Moroso tire guage that is accurate within +/-2%, so I always know I have the correct pressure in my tires. I'm running 36/44, just as recommended. I bought that tire guage ($50) after checking the pressure on my motorcycle and I had a 6 PSI differene between the three gauges I was using. 6 PSI on a motorcycle is a pretty big difference in regards to handling! My summer wheels aren't butter smooth because they are the original tires, and the fronts are super dry-rotted. So around 85 MPH they start to vibrate a bit, but they are fine at speeds below that.

Wow...aren't we PICKY..!! Do you know that your lug bolts are rusted..?? Time for powder coating. Winter specialty tires are especially prone to vibration problems, moreso when mounted on low weight alloys. I would first suspect an internal (belt slipped..??) tire problem.

Quotes source post: 7141248

Here's link (I hope) to the thread I mentioned: https://rennlist.com/forums/boxster-...ing-shake.html Sincerely, Macster.

Quotes source post: 7141347

Huh? You wouldn't be frustrated if a shop scratched up your brand new set of wheels? These are not low weight wheels. 25 lbs for the fronts, 29 lbs for the rears.

Quotes source post: 7141540

PERFECT! Thank you very much. He is running the same wheels that I'm running and having the exacty same problem that I'm having. As suspected, it's a problem with the bore of the wheel not perfectly matching the hub diameter. I'm going to go pull off my wheels and see how much movement I have on the hub without the lugs installed. I think I'm just going to mount the snows on my OEM wheels and then hopefully pick up another set of OEM wheels for summer tires. - Anthony

Here are some photos that I took last night. I took the first photo, then rotated the wheel 180 degrees and took the other. I noticed I could very slightly move the wheel when it was sitting on hub, and as you can see, it allows the wheel to slack so it's not perfectly centered. I will be calling TireRack shortly. - Anthony

Timely thread. I also bought the identical package: Sport Edition Cup 4 with LM-25 tires. And when I installed them a couple of weeks ago, I had a bad vibration above 60mph. I took them to my local shop and they ran both fronts on the GSP9700. Balance was fine, and the road force, while a bit higher on one than the other (14 lbs vs. 4 lbs), was well under the spec. The guy at the shop mentioned the possibility that the wheels were not tightly hubcentric as a possible cause of the vibration. They put them back on, I drove away and immediately noticed that the vibration was not as bad.

I dropped the winter wheels for my '03 Audi S8 off with my mechanic to check because they caused driveline vibration at the end of the season last year. I run sport techs (whichever the cheapest from Tire Rack are) and Dunlop winters. I conluded that it was likely I had a bent rim from New England potholes. My mechanic just told me that all 4 rims are bent. The hubs had a spacer and I had an issue lug nut hole rust that caused some vibration last year. Maybe one or both of these things caused the bending. Anyway, I offer this for information and hope you do not have the same problem. I am going to put the winter tires on my stock rims (overbuilt and bulletproof) and figure out what to do next season.

Bringing this back up - thinking of buying a set of winter wheels and tires (blizzaks on Porsche Sport Edition Cup 4 wheels). Anybody have any issues with this particular set up? Thanks in advance.