steering wheel shake 60mph and above

Are they KDWs? that is your problem. I don't think anything (including a road force balance) can get these tires to not shimmy slightly on the highway. I have road forced a couple pairs of the KDWs and the rims are round and true and the tires don't run out but they still shake 65+ slightly. It's the tires and I can't wait for this set to wear out so I can buy something else
 
My guess would be since you mounted used tires, is that the tires are out of round. Probably this is the reason that they were replaced before they were worn out originally.
 
VicsEvilBrother said:
Are they KDWs? that is your problem. I don't think anything (including a road force balance) can get these tires to not shimmy slightly on the highway. I have road forced a couple pairs of the KDWs and the rims are round and true and the tires don't run out but they still shake 65+ slightly. It's the tires and I can't wait for this set to wear out so I can buy something else
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I disagree totally with ^^^^^ this assessment. If you are getting steering wheel shimmy at all, you've got a problem somewhere. Don't blame it on the KDWS tires. I have been running the OEM KDWS on the front of my MM for nearly 6 years and have never had a problem after they were properly balanced. The car is rock solid at any speed and tracks true, tire wear is even across the fronts, no drift or pull to either side at all. Maybe I am just lucky.
 
When I got mine I had the same problem. I have a friend who worked on it until it was right. He ended up breaking down all four tires and checking the wheels alone on the balancer. Found one rim slightly bent so we put it on the rear and moved the rear rims to the front. With the slightly damaged rim on the back I have not felt the vibration any more. All balanced out and tire wear is even.
 
This is directly from my OASIS REPORT:

6/4/03 @ 1351 miles
road force balance 4 tires and dimount 2 to correct (vibration @ 60 MPH+)


Do we have a Theme HERE!?
 
I disagree totally with ^^^^^ this assessment. If you are getting steering wheel shimmy at all, you've got a problem somewhere. Don't blame it on the KDWS tires.
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I am not the only one who had rims checked for trueness, had road forcing done w/ lug centric adapters multiple times, and has a low mileage car with a perfect alignment, and still has shimmy, w/ the KDWs being the common denominator. There was a guy on here who replaced his multiple sets of KDWs that always shimmied and the shimmy went away. I am not making this stuff up. I have my own electronic balancer at my house and I have dismounted the tires and checked runout with a dial indicator and the wheels do not run out.

I additionally am running a high quality brake rotor that is dynamically balanced. My car has 38k miles on it and I got it when it had 23k on it, and it has always had the shimmy on the highway. If you let the steering wheel out of your hands it saws slightly side-side. Which to me indicates a belting issue in the tire.
 
VicsEvilBrother said:
I am not the only one who had rims checked for trueness, had road forcing done w/ lug centric adapters multiple times, and has a low mileage car with a perfect alignment, and still has shimmy, w/ the KDWs being the common denominator. There was a guy on here who replaced his multiple sets of KDWs that always shimmied and the shimmy went away. I am not making this stuff up. I have my own electronic balancer at my house and I have dismounted the tires and checked runout with a dial indicator and the wheels do not run out.

I additionally am running a high quality brake rotor that is dynamically balanced. My car has 38k miles on it and I got it when it had 23k on it, and it has always had the shimmy on the highway. If you let the steering wheel out of your hands it saws slightly side-side. Which to me indicates a belting issue in the tire.
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I don't dispute your experience. Maybe you did pick up a bad set of KDWS. But it is not a problem with all of them. I have run two sets that have been perfect over 62,000 miles. Others have probably had the same assessment assuming they don't have the inner wear alignment issue.

Generally, tires that are deemed "out of round" or that have internal belting issues will require an excessive amount of weights to attempt to correct the natural imbalance of the tire itself. This should be a big clue.
 
I have about .75 oz/side on all 4 wheels on average. For an 18" wheel that is excellent. I rebalanced tires on one of our members MM's and his KDWs fronts took over 4 oz/wheel. Heh
 
Hey I'm bringing this back from the dead because I am about to change out my front KDWs for the new radial TA spec "test tires" we have been talking about in the other thread.

My Marauder still has the steering wheel "Jiggle" or side to side sawing action, 40 mph and above. If you let your hands off the wheel it literally will saw side to side slightly. The car continues to track straight but the steering wheel does a little wiggle dance.

I have balanced the tires so many times it's not funny. I have my own Coats spin balancer now and it was recently calibration checked by a calibration service before I bought it. I do self calibration checks on the machine every couple times I use it and it always passes. I balance in "fine" mode which reads out to 0.01 oz instead of rounding off to the nearest 0.25 oz like most shops do.

I have also match mounted the tires to obtain the lowest amount of radial runout possible.

I have checked the wheels with a dial indicator w/ the tires off, on both the inside and outside bead seating areas. This is one of the important measurements that a Hunter road force machine would be doing but I'm doing it manually since I don't have a $15,000 balancer. I am getting less than 0.010" runout, peak to peak, on each edge. This is about 1/4 of the max runout allowable per DOT and 1/2 the runout that is acceptable per the factory service manual.

So we can safely eliminate wheel runout and wheel/tire assembly balance as the cause of my vibration.

runout3.jpg


runout2.jpg


The tires do not run out much unloaded but that doesn't mean there isn't a stiffness variation in the sidewalls that shows up when loaded.

My suspension bushings and alignment are all great and I replaced the brake rotors with mill-balanced quality replacements.

If its not the tires than I don't know what could cause such a vibration. The fact that it shows up at such a low speed and that it causes the steering wheel to steer itself side to side seems to indicate one of the 2 front KDW tires has something going on once per revolution.
 
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