Vibration

[dai capp]

Afternoon

I find at around 70mph I get a terrific steering wheel judder as though my front wheels are way out of balance. I\'ve had them re balanced but no joy - I still get the judder.

Anyone got any ideas, I have aftermarket 17 inch alloys but the front tyres are - wait for it - remoulds (I\'m having them changed at the weekend).

Could it be crap tyres to blame or something else...

Any feedback would be appreciated because if I go on a long journey in it currently it\'ll get vibration white finger!

Cheers

DC

[iaint]

likely the crap tyres deforming at speed! *shudder*

Iain

[Fish]

Remolds are a lot better than they used to be, but I would never use them on anything that can do more than 40mph.

At a guess, yes they would be the cause of the vibration.

Fish

[dai capp]

Cheers...

I was a little alarmed to see it had remoulds on it. :eek

Asyou can guess I immediately ordered a set of decent tyres. I\'ve gone for Toyo Proxes. I had them fitted to the TVR\'s and they always seemed OK...

All the best

DC

[iaint]

The Toyos seem to be very good tyres.  Almost identical tread pattern to Eagle F1s.  Mate uses them on his GT4 and they\'re good on road (not too noisy) and grippy little buggers when hot and sticky on track.

Iain

[Andyp]

check ya brake discs too they can cause juddering if they are slightly damaged / warped

[shaunwil]

Have you got spacers on? My fto would judder terrible with a 5mm spacer, swap to 3mm and was fine again.

[Wav]

Does it clear up at say 75/80mph upwards? if so then that\'ll be resonance in the system somewhere. Mine did this and tried a few things but to no avail, i then changed my front struts because they were completely gone, so were just running on the springs on the front and this fixed the problems completely. As the resonant frequency of the spring must have been at around 70mph and without the damping of the struts the vibrations just got worse. So yeah my advice is to check that your front in fact all your struts are in good condition.

Regards,

Paul:)

P.S. have you had the car properly tracked?

[scooby_si]

yeah could be any of above although my money would be on shyte rubber, if it real extreme you may even be able to see it wobble if you get car off ground & spin the wheel saw a transit the other day whose tyre you could see moving out & in & it rotated Apparently his boss had got them cheap!!!!! lol
Si

[scooby_si]

had same thing with spacers on front wheels of me scoob & well not good also erm know anyone with wheels locally you can try to narrow it down a bit cheaply?
Si

[dai capp]

Thanks for the replies...

I\'ve got an excellent tyre fitter that I\'ve used for years and he\'s going to check the offsets and tracking etc when he changes the tyres at the weekend.

Failing that I\'m off up to WGT on 24th so I\'ll ask Pip for his thoughts and get him to check the struts. I\'d be suprised if they\'re shot though, especially since I paid the AA £200 to bumper to bumper inspect the car before I bought it and that was only a couple of weeks ago!

I\'m really hoping that the tyre folks can sort it though as I\'m having quite a bit done at WGT\'s and don\'t want to impose too much on Pips time...

Cheers

DC

[clive]

Hi DC,

Balancing should have shown up any tyre deficiencies, whatever the tyre.
Please get your ball joints, track rod ends and rack checked ASAP, some tyre fitting garages will offer free suspension checks.

I have said many times that one of the best investments you can make with an FD is to have a full 4 wheel laser line geometry check and adjust as these cars should drive arrow straight with no vibrations at whatever speed!!  

Hope this helps

[dai capp]

Just to update...

I had the Toyo\'s fitted by the tyre folks, all tracking and balance done and the vibration has gone. Big relief that - it didn\'t want to have to fork out extra dough on either suspension or alloys just yet as I\'ve got the ECU etc to stump up for first!

Cheers for all the replies...

All the best

DC

[shaunwil]

If you had it inspected by the AA your actually insured against any problems that they missed . I met a guy a while back that had one inspected and they said everything was fine, couple of weeks later it blew up and the AA paid the bill for a rebuild ! Worth giving them a ring if it isn\'t listed in the inspection, hopefully they will pay the bill.