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Possible causes of vibration after new wheels/tires

Reflex2dr

Ready to race!
Location
Midwest
30mph?? The issue wasn't present before you switched wheels... Hmmmm. This is fishy. 30mph is really low to experience vibrations, even with plastic hubrings. when I had plastic rings i didn't get vibrations till 65+mph

Yeah I can start to feel it shaking at 30mph even. It feels like an up/down sensation in the seat. Night and day compared to factory wheels. I even went back and forth changing wheels just to confirm and yeah. It kind of fades off a little at 40-50 then at highway speeds it picks back up and I can feel it in the wheel/dash.
 
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Cruiser

Ready to race!
Location
SoCal
The tire shop threw away your rings?
Shaking up and down?
That tire shop sucks!
I contend that your wheels are not properly balanced
 

ashchuckton

Ready to race!
Location
Ohio
First thing. Do not go back to that tire shop, they are incompetent.

I've used plastic hub-centric rings on 2 cars for over 10 years & have never had any issues with them. Those cars even saw race track use with no problems.

1 Go to a better shop.

2 Use the hub-centric rings. Plastic or metal if you'd rather.

3 Road force balance.

4 Enjoy your smooth ride.
 

Cruiser

Ready to race!
Location
SoCal
First thing. Do not go back to that tire shop, they are incompetent.

I've used plastic hub-centric rings on 2 cars for over 10 years & have never had any issues with them. Those cars even saw race track use with no problems.

1 Go to a better shop.

2 Use the hub-centric rings. Plastic or metal if you'd rather.

3 Road force balance.

4 Enjoy your smooth ride.

At the very least, incompetent.
I can't help but wonder if there is malice involved, because at 30 mph? C'mon, sounds like they intentionally unbalanced them by placing the weights 180 deg out.
 

Reflex2dr

Ready to race!
Location
Midwest
Talk to your VW Dealer.
Mine is very good at tire balancing.
Good machine, good operator.
Worth a try if you do not find a better shop that is recommended in your area.

Lol I wont be going anywhere near that NTB again for more reasons than have been posted in this thread.

I have a service on Wednesday with VW and I'm going to see if they will just have a look since rotation is normally included.

Im going to get the metal rings I guess and get an alignment first. Im not confident that either is going to fix the problem because i saw little to no improvement after the addition of the rings from Neuspeed. I have had the wheels off and checked the rings they do not look worn or anything; I suppose an alignment is called for anyways though. If that doesn't fix it I will have the wheels road force balanced as some others have suggested.
 
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spelk3

Ready to race!
Location
Mountain View, CA
Car(s)
‘17 BMW xDrive35i
The Gti hubs have a ridge on them and some plastic hub rings don't work. I had gorilla plastic rings and vibration was horrible, switched to solid rings and vibrations went away.
 

yamamoto1

New member
Location
So Cal
I have been in your situation many times, and know how to fix it

Jack the car up
Loosen the lugs until finger tight
Grab torque wrench and tighten each lug in a star pattern to 10lbs
Then increase torque to 20lbs in a star pattern
Then 30lbs, 40, 50lbs,etc up to 75lbs
Then lower car off jack
Test drive, then confirm torque @ 75 lbs

You should be fine
 

PLF8593

Drag Race Newbie
Location
Philly
Car(s)
19 Alltrack 6MT
Jack the car up
Loosen the lugs until finger tight
Grab torque wrench and tighten each lug in a star pattern to 10lbs
Then increase torque to 20lbs in a star pattern
Then 30lbs, 40, 50lbs,etc up to 75lbs
Then lower car off jack
Test drive, then confirm torque @ 75 lbs

You should be fine

the wheels need to be tightened to 20 ft-lbs in the air in a star pattern, then 88 ft-lbs on the ground.

I had tons of vibration issues, and getting aluminum hubrings and getting them tightened on my car like i mentioned above solved my issues. If you do this, and there's still vibrations, there's 3 remaining possibilities: the wheels need to be road force balanced (try that first). If that doesn't do it, there is a deformity in either the wheels or the tires. Unlikely the wheels would be deformed but tires are much less likely to be perfect from the manufacturer.

Sorry for replugging my previous response but it seemed you didn't read it. Like yamamoto, I too have had various vibration issues in my time. It took me 6 months to get to the bottom of it. I went through hell and back to figure it out. I assure you that, if your wheels are properly balanced and you're still having vibration issues, then adhering to the above prescriptions will ~95% likely fix your problem.
 

yamamoto1

New member
Location
So Cal
Trust me,

Slowly build the torque up when the car is jacked up

If it only has 20lbs of torque and you lower it off the jack, the force and the weight of the car hitting the ground might slightly nudge them off of perfect center, triggering vibration.
 

Al_in_Philly

Autocross Newbie
Location
Philadelphia USA
Jack the car up
Loosen the lugs until finger tight
Grab torque wrench and tighten each lug in a star pattern to 10lbs
Then increase torque to 20lbs in a star pattern
Then 30lbs, 40, 50lbs,etc up to 75lbs
Then lower car off jack
Test drive, then confirm torque @ 75 lbs

You should be fine

Yamamoto is almost right.

The wheel hubs on MQB cars have an inward taper to them (I presume to save weight). Virtually all other cars maintain the same diameter along the length of the wheel hub. If you're running wheels with 57.1mm bores this is no issue, but with larger openings HUB-CENTRIC RINGS WILL OFTEN NOT MAKE FULL CONTACT WITH THE HUB, as they usually don't extent up to the area of the hub where it is at its full diameter, regardless of the material they are made from. This results in the wheels often being mounted slightly off center (especially if they were installed with an air wrench). Progressively cross torqueing the wheels, up to their stated maximum, seats the wheels dead center over the axles, and usually eliminates that annoying vibration.

I only said that Yamamoto was "almost right" because the factory recommended torque setting is 88 ft. lbs.--at least on my R.

Give it a try.
 
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