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Car vibration

I invested in a set of Nokian all-season tires last October and hit the 5k mark last month. After the tires were rotated, the car vibrates when we reach about 45-50mph. I thought that maybe one was out of balance, or lost a weight, so I took it back to the store where I bought them (and had them rotated), and they re-balanced them but the problem remains.

I found out later that they did not test drive the car to see if the vibration remained, which seems odd to me and makes concerned about going back there for more diagnostics.

What are other probably causes of vibration when the car reaches 45mph or so?

Would the rebalance rule out a bad tire? The store was sold to a franchise and the tires were expensive, so I'm concerned that if it is a bad tire I'm going to have to replace a set that is less than 1 year and 5k old.

TIA, Dave

Reply to
tom_sawyer70
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No. It could still be a bad tire.

Reply to
HLS

It could also be a bent wheel rim.

Reply to
the fly

There's no guarantee they balanced it competently. Especially in the past few years I've had to go back several times to get tires balanced correctly.

Reply to
E Meyer

a speed sensitive vibration sounds like a balancing problem. was it ok before you rotated the tires? did you include the spare in the rotation?

Reply to
boxing

Everything was fine before the rotation.

Although, no, I did not include the spare in the rotation, but that is a good point. Not that including the spare was part of the rotation, but that I did not think of buying a fifth tire as a space.

Reply to
tom_sawyer70

Tom, did they reverse rotation direction when they rotated? If so, wear pattern may be the culprit. CAREFULLY drag your hand around the circumference of the tires--in both directions. Do you feel a 'drag' on your fingers in one direction--esp. on the tires that WERE on the pulling axles before? If so, often when that drag is reversed, it causes tires to vibrate as you describe. Also, quite often re-rotating them, where they end up(as compared to originally) front-to-rear on both sides, and re-balancing will help. Most tires your brand I've seen are ~17-inch, (semi?) high performance, and highly susceptible to balance issues. I'd be hesitant to "X" them during rotation. s

Reply to
sdlomi2

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