In the beginning of April, I took-off my set of dedicated winter wheels and tires, and put the factory 17's back on. Since then, I've been experiencing some kind of imbalance/vibration problem, that's turned into a case of a "ghost in the machine".

I've since mounted and remounted them twice, each time checking for some kind of a fitment problem. The only thing that I could think of, was maybe the steel winter wheels had left behind some corrosion behind that was preventing the factory wheels from seating properly. With that in mind, I spent considerable time cleaning up the hubs and center bore of wheels with a fine wire brush and steel wool. Still, the problem persisted.

From there, I had the wheel/tires rebalanced by a trusted technician. Unfortunately, this did not remedy the problem either. In fact, oddly enough, afterwards the vibration seemed more pronounced. :(

I have lots of experience with aftermarket wheel and tire applications with Porsches and other high performance, but this one has me befuddled.

Last year, I transitioned from winter to summer wheel set-ups with no problems at all. I can't figure out what has changed ? In addition, my Clubman S only has 10k original miles, with 2/3's of that mileage being accrued on the winter set-up. That being said, wear is clearly not the problem with summer set-up.

Anyone have any thoughts as to what could be causing this
vibration/imbalance issue ?

p.s.

I'm not getting any shake in the steering wheel. The sense of vibration is being transmitted through the "seat" and floor panels.

 

Maybe bad front end bushings on the control arm or suspension that just so happened to start going bad when you swapped? yeah, you wouldnt expect it on a 10k car, but its a MINI. have you tried swapping back the winters to see if the vibrations are still there?

Maybe the vibrations are from the rear wheels. have you tried rotating front to back?

 

Take it back to the dealer? Only 10 k on it. ?

Axle issue?

Car lowered?

 

Have the tires road force balanced. This will show any issue in tire and rim roundness + balancing.

 

Unfortunately, the winter tires are studded, so there's not much to be gained by swapping them back.

Also, I tried rotating the tires to no avail.

 

The vehicle is completely stock.

 

I thought about having them road forced balanced next. However, it still remains a mystery to me as to why the vehicle drove perfectly fine last season with the wheels and tires that were originally mounted and balanced at the factory?

As far as the suspension is concerned, so far I haven't been able to detect any faulty parts.

 

After chasing this problem for months, to include several trips to the dealership, the culprit causing the mystery vibration was finally discovered.

In less than 10,000 miles, my vehicle had developed a broken lower engine mount :( It's had to imagine that this could happen to a vehicle this new, but it did. In fact, some of the techs at MINI speculated that it may have been the result of something that went wrong during the initial assembly at the factory ?

Anyway, after months of misery, and exhaustive steps to prevail upon MINI to fix the problem, the vibration issue seems to be resolved.

Btw, in the course of troubleshooting the problem, I went so far as to change out the run-flat tires for some standard rubber - thinking that they might be the cause of the problem. In any case, I was no fan of the run-flats, and I'm just as happy to see them gone from the vehicle.