Tossed a wheel weight....

... and started a shimmy - flutter in the steering at around 72 mph. Stopped in to Mavis and had all four rebalanced, still got the flutter.

Thoughts?

Low tire pressure or crappy tires could cause it. So could a bent rim, but I'd imagine you'd know if that happened.

My wife's Saab is doing this. At first I thought she threw a weight. After a re-balance didn't work, a google search revealed it to be a common problem with the tires that came with the car (cooper all seasons). Shortly after the vibration came de-lamination, and apparently they'll pop if we keep running them much longer.

Timely topic. Just spent a weekend battering my Tacoma in Grand Staircase Escalante and as soon as I was back on pavement it felt like I had thrown a weight. So the question will be, re-balance or new wheel/tire combo...

Recently had a Speed3 that had a bad pull and shuttering steering. Thought for sure it was balance and alignment. Turns out a new set of tires fixed all.

Really not sure how worn tires results in that bad of an effect, but it did.

Tread separation was the issue I had a couple of weeks ago when I thought I tossed a weight.

If you could find a shop that has a "Road Force" balancer it would tell you if the tire has a structural problem.

Look closely at the tread while someone else slowly drivers the car. You may have slipped a belt by hitting a pothole or something. If you see a wiggle in the tread while moving, you tire is junk.

Could be a broken belt, or the tech messed up the balance job.

BrokenYugo wrote: Could be a broken belt, or the tech messed up the balance job.

Yeah, or the machine said 'close enough' and the tech just put the wheel right back on the car.

You got a shimmy and assumed it was a tossed wheel weight. You re-balanced the wheels, only to discover that wasn't the problem.

Start from there.

You could see where the weight was on with double sided tape and none were on the wheel, so I'm assuming a correct assumption.

No chunks of mud or anything in the wheel to offset things.

914Driver wrote: ... and started a shimmy - flutter in the steering at around 72 mph.

Speed up

2008 Saab Sportcombi wagon.

AR1 sport edition 17"x7.5"wheels.

BFGoodrich G Force a/s 225/45/17.

Shimmy is in the wheel between 65 & 75 mph, but it's intermittent.

All 4 wheels were rebalanced and witnessed. Front end is tight, tie rods et al.

I hate cars.....

Hey, we have the same car! (2007 Sport Kombi). Except ours runs 235/45/17's...

Have you tried moving the fronts to the back to see if the wheel shimmy goes away? That'd eliminate wheels/tires from the equation.

Swapped them at the time of the rebalance (Monday)no change.

Wait, no change; so it's NOT the wheels and tires?

Shouldn't be, unless the back ones (now on the front) were doing the shimmy shimmy shake too

I've actually had an alignment issue (toe-in) cause a similar problem at 55-60MPH. Swapped tires, rotated tires, balanced them multiple times and it wouldn't go away. Then I remembered I never re-aligned the car after I put lowering springs on (dumbass!).

this will probably not help but here it goes anyway. On my OG 9-3 I chased a shimmy for about a year until I figured out what was going on. Crap build up on the hub and the wheel were causing the issue. I took a wire wheel on a drill and cleaned up both the hub and the the part of the wheel that mates to the hub and the shimmy went away. I ended up doing that every time the wheels came off and the issue never came back.

I know yours is a different chassis but you never know.

That was done when the wheels went on, hubs and calipers painted.

914Driver wrote: Swapped them at the time of the rebalance (Monday)no change. Wait, no change; so it's NOT the wheels and tires?

I did this in my situation also. It changed the shimmy a bit, but it was still there.

How old / worn are the tires? The tires in my situation had good tread in the center, but where wearing on the outer edges (I think the stock camber was too much for them). So... it could still be the tires.

I had a shimmy I chased for a LONG time on my Corvair. I had a suspicion for a while what it could be (I had gone through everything) but was assured that just does not happen. Eventually, I got an apology when the machine shop found... out of balance brake drums!! (like REALLY out of balance).

The drums where new, but appeared to be cut out of center somehow.

pheller wrote: Timely topic. Just spent a weekend battering my Tacoma in Grand Staircase Escalante and as soon as I was back on pavement it felt like I had thrown a weight. So the question will be, re-balance or new wheel/tire combo...

Make sure you don't have a lot of dirt packed inside the wheels. This happened to me driving one of our F150 4x4s and I wondered if it was going to make it back to the office. Those E36 M3ty wheels are designed to hold mud.

Delayed Update:

My son's car, he took it to his local trusted tire guy; 3 of 4 wheels are bent! He's anal about his cars, how can you hit something that hard and not know it? (SWMBO doesn't drive it)

Obviously it doesn't take much. I guess the plan is to live with it for a few months, put factory wheels and snows on in the fall and address it next spring.

He's running 245(?) - 45 - 17s which doesn't give much side wall cushion. Looks nice, but you drive in NYC.

I like anthracite colored steelies with Baby Moons and rings for that car, but it's not my car....

914Driver wrote: how can you hit something that hard and not know it? (SWMBO doesn't drive it)

this is the single greatest thing ive read in a while haha

You'd be surprised. I've had 6 bent wheels on the Fiat thanks to low profile tires and poor roads.

In reply to Wall-e:

I'm curious to see the Fiat that has (at least?) six wheels.