**UPDATE**

Ok, so I went and got brand new tires (I wanted a different size) and had them mounted and balanced. They checked the wheels and said that none of them appeared bent at all.

I've also since added Koni Sport shocks, changed out the front sway bar bushings and added powerflex control arm bushings.

I am still getting a slight vibration around 65-70 mph. Also I am still getting a little bit of vibration on hard acceleration.

I also have the appropriate metal hub centric rings.

One of my upper strut mounts is bad so I am replacing both of those today.

Could it be anything else? Ball joints? Wheel bearings? Tie rods? axels?

Or does the culprit still seem to be the tires?

I also plan on installing the powerflex rear lower mount insert and gear box inserts to help with some of the wheel hop. I have a VIP stabilizer brace on the passangers side motor mount.

Any options that I could check would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to replace what's unecessary right now.

Thanks

Ok, so long story short, when I bought my 06' MCS (54k miles), it came on stock SLites with Federal Tires, but the tires are worn out on the inside front and cupped in the rear with bad wear.

So I went to Discount Tire and bought brand new wheels (Drag DR38's in Charcoal) and Hankook Ventus V12 tires. I took the tires, got them mounted and had the front and rear tires balanced.

Before I put them on I installed my new Swift Lowering Springs and HSport rear lower Camber arms then went and got a four wheel alignment.

After that I went home and put the new wheels on. Discount Tire included plastic hub rings that fit correctly. I used the stock bolts, they fit in barely and I had to use a thin walled socket to put them on, but they seemed to go on ok. After I got them on and tightened them up, I took the car for a ride. Rode great until I get on the highway and then around 65mph the steering wheel starts to vibrate.

With the SLites on, while the tires had tons of road noise and NVH from being all tore up, they did not vibrate like the new wheels and tires are doing.

I have 2 thoughts in my head and I was wondering if anyone could provide other possible issues.

1.) The wheels need to be rebalanced as in the place didn't do it right.

2.) Do I need different wheel bolts for aftermarket wheels? The stock ones barely fit into the holes and may wobble? What do stock wheel bolts get torqued to?

Any insight you guys could provide would be great. I need to get off these ragged tires on the Slites, I'm sick of the noise.

Thanks!

 

Sounds like they are not centered on the hubs if you are certain the hub centric rings are right...
When you say the stock bolts barely fit..it makes me uneasy...were they too short length wise??
you can buy tuner head lug bolts to fit the rim better...

 

Thanks for the response, I will get the actual specs off the hub rings when I get to the garage where the bag is that they came in. They are very snug on the hub and fit into the wheel perfectly.

The stock bolts thread in quite a bit, but actually going into the wheel, the wheel holes are a very tight fit. I can only get a thin walled socket on them to tighten them down. Plus after reading some more last night, maybe the factory wheel locks are seating right? I am going to check that today as well.

I started looking at the actual tuner bolts and I am thinking of going that route. Alta sells the spline drive ones which I am leaning towards. Any other places carry them for reasonable prices?

Also what size would i need? 14mm x 1.25 or 12mm x 1.5? I have a 2006, build date is late 2005.

Thanks!

 

When going to aftermarket rims, the LENGTH of the bolts can be an issue...get the same width you have now....gorollia has them in a tuner head, and effectivly becomes secure due to the uniqueness of the check/driver...think i got mine from jeggs...lenth needed will vary based upon the rim/offset.
If you are sure the ballance is right, try removing them, then boling them back on after cleaning the hub....a bit of rust or grit on the hub can cause vibrations...

 

Well the wheels themselves are 17x7 +40. They are Drag DR-38's.

I was looking at different styles, just didn't know the length needed to be checked. How would I figure out how long they need to be?

I can't be sure the balance is right, I had them balanced at a local tire shop, but I mean there are plenty of other threads stating people had to have it rechecked before it was correct.

So I guess when I can figure it out, I will get some tuner type lugs, but I will also clean off the rust if any and the dirt off the hub.

 

I had a very similar vibration when only changing out wheels and tires.

Had the package balanced several times and no luck in fixing. I even had them checked on a Hunter Road Force as requested by Tire Rack since they came from there.

End result, it was the hub rings. Even though they looked right and you couldn't see any difference, I swapped them for a replacement set that TR sent me and the problem went away.

IDK bout your bolts not fitting so I can't help you there.

 

Ok so I found the package the hub rings came in. They are 73mm to 56.15mm hub rings. SOOOO after some reading, I am seeing that the Mini is a 56.1mm hub bore. I checked the box on the wheels and they are 73mm center bore.

My question, would 56.15mm instead of 56.1mm be a problem? I did the calculations from mm to inches and there is a small difference, so would new hub rings solve the problem? Would that sound plausible to you guys?

 

Small update, I called back discount tire direct, go them to send me the correct hub rings for free, 73mm to 56.10mm. Also ordered a set of their tuner wheel bolts. They will be here thurs so I will try to throw everything back together then.

I guess if that doesn't work, its off to get them rebalanced and see if that fixes it.

 

The .05 mm difference should not be a problem.

 

I didn't think it could really effect that much, but they included them for free again when I ordered the tuner bolts... I probably wouldn't have bothered if they were going to charge me for them.

 

OK so small update again, discount tire sent me a set of aluminum 73mm - 56.1mm hub rings for free so I cleaned off the center of the hub really well and installed those.

I also installed the new Gorilla Spline Drive wheel bolts as recommended. I made sure to torque them to 88 ft/lbs, actually did it with each individual wheel in the air, one at a time.

Took it for a ride to work this morning, and sure enough, still have the vibration at 60+ mph. Any other ideas?

While I was replacing them yesterday, I checked all the bolts in my suspension, everything is tight, nothing has any play in it (i.e. tie rod ends, inner tie rods).

My tires are so messed up on my slites that they make tons of noise, but they still didn't vibrate like this, so should I have them rebalanced?

Thanks guys and any insight would be extremely helpful, I am suppose to take a trip thurs. night to go home and see my family for xmas and I am really trying to get this solved by then!

 

I hate to say this, but I had the same exact problem when I bought new wheels. I purchased brand new wheels, tires, tpms, hub rings and lug nuts. I had horrible shaking so we took it back to get them rebalanced 3 times. It helped a little bit, but it didn't go away. So when that didn't do it we tried different hub rings, that didn't help. It turns out that 2 of my brand new wheels were bad. One was egg shaped and another just barely out of round.

It has now been over a month and I have had a total of 8 wheels shipped to me, 6 brand new/2 apparently mounted before, and I just now finally have 4 wheels that are round.

I usually buy used wheels, but b.c it is a brand new car I decided to get brand new wheels. I must say I have never had such an issue with wheels and I have owned about 100 sets of wheels.

 

Deep down, this was part of my fear. I'm going to get them rebalanced today, but I am very worried that the problem is more severe and that it is an actual issue with the wheels themselves. I don't really have the time/money to try and keep getting new wheels and pay to have tires dismounted, remounted, balanced, etc.

I'll update this thread when I get it back from the tireshop after a rebalance this afternoon.

 

It sounds like the wheels are out of round.

Do you still have your old wheels? Is the vibration there with those?

I would only use OE wheels or aftermarkets from US, Germany or Italy. Same with tires. They are getting more and more rare, and most aftermarket wheels are now made in China to keep price down and that usually comes at the expense of quality. Tire Rack gives you the country of manufacture for wheels and tires. I use that as a decision factor more so than cost and looks alone.

 

I dropped the car off to be road force balanced on my lunch break. I asked them specifically to see if they could check if the wheels were bent or not round in anyway so that I could call back to discount tire if I needed to and get them replaced or return them.

I'm hoping thats not the problem as my buddy ordered a set from the same manufacturer same day for his civic and his wheels balanced out fine after the tires were mounted.

My OEM S Lites didn't vibrate like this no, but the tires were worn out in all different ways making them unbelievably noisy and causing harsh nvh in the car.

If the wheels end up being warped, I am going to look into returning them all together and I will get the new tires mounted on my S Lites, they aren't in the greatest shape and I was hoping for something lighter, but I don't have time to deal with hunting down good wheels that are brand new.

Fingers crossed that this fixes it!

 

been here - done this....

the breakthrough for my long story was a gent that put the car up on the lift, and asked another mechanic to sit in it, and run it in 2nd gear so we could see the front rims spinning at 20 mph or so...

in my case what we saw was bad centering rings (it was obvious!) which would never have turned up no matter how many trips to the balancing machine - but we know that is not the case here, however

any out of roundness, eccentricity, or asymmetry in those wheels will jump out at you once you can see them turning at decent speed, and mounted on the car.

just saying - if you haven't yet tried that...

Cheers,

Charlie

 

Thanks for the insight. I am going to pick the car up in a few minutes, if it still has the issue I will try and check that out tonight!

 

Update again,

So I got the car back from the road force balancing and it helped tremedously. They didn't mention anything about the wheels being warped, I asked them to check that if possible.

The vibration for the most part is non existant now, weirdly, it comes in very lightly and then goes away, but that seems to be dependant on road conditions.

I was reading on here the other day about kicking the front tires when looking at purchasing a used mini so I just randomly did and my wheel jiggles quite a bit. No noise associated with it, but it def. jiggles back and forth... so I'm assuming the front control arm bushings are shot.

Could that cause any type of minor vibration or harness while driving?

 

If the vibration comes and goes with driving, that suggests to me some minor
residual wheel imbalance - it can come and go as the imbalance in one of the
front wheels goes in and out of sync with the imbalance in the other one.

If the road wheel jiggles quite a bit (moves fore and aft) when you kick the tires,
that definitely sounds like the FCA bushings are shot - time to replace the short-lived
oem ones with the Powerslot ones.
If the steering wheel jiggles quite a bit when you kick the front tires, that's normal.

 

Yea the road wheel jiggles quite a bit when I kick it. So I'm fairly certain its the FCA bushings. So I guess before I can try and isolate the problem for sure, I am going to hit up Waymotorworks and get a set of front control arm bushings.

I also caught a quick very slight hint of coolant in the heater this morning so I think my heater core is on its way out as well, so I will address that first I think then off to FCA Bushings...

at least if I ever have to buy another R53 MCS I'll def. know what to look for! So far I am hitting every majoy known flaw and replacing them as they come i.e. tensioner, upper motor mount, PS fan, etc. Guess once I get through the heater core and Bushings that should be most of the major common problems lol and I will be good for awhile

 

Updated first post.. still trying to track this down.

 

If you jack the car up and grab the tire at 12 and 6 rocking it back and forth there should be no play. IF it is chances are the wheel bearing is bad. Yes that will cause vibration issues.

 

I have a similar situation at fwy speeds if 70+mph. Wheels were balanced and it helped a bit but then rotated them and the vibrations minimalized. Recently I had powerflex lca bushings installed, does anyone know if poly lca bushing tend to cause vibrating steering wheels at high speeds? I was able to get the tire shop to agree to swapping out my front pair of wheels to see if the issue is eliminated, if not... I don't know where to go next.... Ball joints?

 

Actually have them road force balanced. I had to do this on my old wheels and all the vibrations went away.

 

My tires are warrantied at America's tire which doesn't have a road force tester. Know of any chains store that do?