Mysterious Shake-Need a little help

NYSpeed Automotive
1

This is pretty much copy and pasted from the F150 forum I’m a member on. They weren’t exactly helpful so I’ll put it out here now and see if any geniuses can provide some input. Hopefully the tire brothers will have a look at this thread. I had another thread going previously on choosing a new wheel / tire combo.October 5, 2014

I’m at a stop sign here with this little mod and could really use some help / advice. I bought this 2006 F150 FX4 locally, used with about 89K on the clock. It came with some American Racing chromies and I liked them at first but when I decided I wasn’t going to be able to run the rubber much longer I looked at doing a complete wheel / tire swap. The BFG’s on there were the TA/KM’s, and while they looked cool, they were loud and made the truck ride like a shopping cart. With winter coming up I knew it was time for another tire choice.

http://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.f150forum.com-vbulletin/1024x576/80-img_20140806_192025757_zpsyjq5flrq_4f1681e52a2d943f72b2a7e8a557cc66035ec22f.jpg
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I looked at a couple different wheels before finally settling on Fuel Revolver’s in 18" flavor. I made the mistake of buying them from 4wheelonline.com and it took the better part of 6 weeks to get the whole debacle they created worked out. I don’t want to get into it too deeply but I ended up buying the correctly sized 4th wheel from another vendor who wasn’t sniffing glue and brain damaged. Word to the wise…DO NOT ORDER FROM THESE MONKEY’S, YOU WILL REGRET IT! After all the BS I finally got my new Goodyear Duratrac’s (same size as the BFG’s 285/70/17 but run a little bigger) from Discount Tire Direct mounted and away I drove. The road noise and ride were much better but once I got on the thruway, that’s when I noticed some shake. Not death wobble bad but annoying from 55-65,70 mph.

http://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.f150forum.com-vbulletin/1024x576/80-img_20140902_193133077_hdr_zps4kogtjsa_4f4d1dd7123a9adb9151c3b3b5815ddbd3d24b59.jpg
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So let me condense this down and save some time.

  1. Took back to my buddy’s shop and rebalanced, traditional balancer. No Change.
  2. He took them to have them road force balanced at a friend’s shop. No change. (Come to find out he may not have road force balanced them as he prmised.
  3. I took them to a local tire shop (Dun Tire) who only does tires. Road force balanced again. Balanced out pretty good with readout sheet and all. No change.
  4. Had varying degree of change with increased tire pressure but nothing major.
  5. Decided I needed hubcentric rings even though most of the data I’ve found on the interweb says these are lug-centric.
  6. Found a set on ebay but they were 87.0 mm / 108.0 mm (they needed to be 87.0 / 106.4 but 108.0 was the closest I could find). I figured they might be a little “snug” but turns out that little difference was a lot and no workie.

Rings are my last option to solve this. I did a pretty good amount of searching with no luck. My question is this. The Ford 87.0 mm hub is pretty common and I would think there’s a lot of these wheels out there, so why can’t I seem to find a proper ring?

I don’t have any other explanation that makes sense in my mind. Wheels: New so can’t (shouldn’t) be bent, Tires: balanced, new rubber. What else is there?

http://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.f150forum.com-vbulletin/1024x576/80-img_20141005_101739710_zpsmzy7ylvc_67f64ea4e82d769dd6765ab40218f750baa8d692.jpg
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http://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.f150forum.com-vbulletin/1024x576/80-img_20141005_101730446_zpsstqobff7_f544ecb95a27b04394f6e2178338c30a65a8dd2a.jpg
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Any insight you can offer would be appreciated. I don’t have any more tricks or ideas and I don’t think I can go on with this, especially being the tires are brand new. I just want a smooth ride back again. Thanks in advance.

PS-Just in case anyone is considering buying these wheels, the holes are very “narrow” and impact sockets will not fit, standard chromies will but are close.

November 13, 2014

This was posted 4-6 weeks ago so here’s where I’m at. I remember seeing on the manufacturer’s website these are supposedly lug centric and not hub centric, now I know the difference. Biggest question is this I guess. If my thinking is sound on this, balancing on any balancer that doesn’t have a lug adapter is going to use the hub center bore and although seeming to balance out on the machine, could be wrong when they are mounted on the truck’s lugs.

I also wanted to try the centric rings out but I need to find someone with a lathe who could mount them and shave 2 mil. off the outside diameter. I doubt this would solve the problem but I’m ready to try anything once at this point. This is a web image of what I have. They are a very hard plastic.

http://ts3.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.608041892002005496&w=244&h=182&c=7&rs=1&pid=1.7

What I have also noticed is that the shaking can almost completely disappear at times. My thinking tells me that if both wheels are out of balance, once in awhile they will “sync” and balance / cancel themselves out. I’m really out of ideas and hope someone has a simple solution instead of me speculating in the dark and trying all the wrong ideas. Thanks in advance.

2

What if you try moving front wheels to back and back to front? If it stops you will at least know its a certain wheel.

3

@99_civic_si @Rx7walker

:tup:

4

I’m going to install upgraded upper control arms and new ball joints this weekend. I’m going to go front to back. I already know at least one of the fronts is problematic but thinking both with the “cancelling” theory. My guess the rears won’t improve the situation up front.

5

Is it in the seat or steering wheel? What speed does it start. Are you confident that this vehicle didn’t vibrate prior

6

Was the front end checked for play? Alignment?

7

Steering wheel. No shake or pull with previous wheels / tires. Still no pull now, just shake. All started after new wheels / tires.

8

I’m free tomorrow till about 6:30 pm. Keep in mind I’ll be getting home from work at 7 am and bed a few hours sleep so maybe between noon and 6 if you’re available hopefully we can figure it out.

9

It’s the tires, I am 90% positive when you were looking at those tires and posted a thread about it I did some research as I was in the market as well and I came across a Tacoma or jeep forum of 50+ pages complaining about the wobble coming from the tires that couldn’t be balanced out.

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by Birdman64

Have you looked at reviews on the Duratracs? Came across a tacoma forum post of 52 pages and from what most of them say it seems like they are a bitch to balance and ride/wear like shit. Posts at the begining were great reviews but at the end everyone seems to be pretty unhappy with them.

I’m going to do more research yet. Reality is I don’t really do much over 65 anywhere and the BFG’s don’t shake too much for what they are. I also think who / how you balance a tire has a lot to do with the end result. I do believe the tread pattern will be much more “road friendly”. I was on some forum too (don’t remember which) and they had the opposite response.[/QUOTE]

10

I’ll see what I can do.

not all the reviews I found were bad and Big Ron and a few random people I spoke to had no issues.

11

I can tell you my dad just bought and 2014 fx4 with wrangler sras. I balanced them here and took um to my other shop with a road force. I couldn’t get the wobble gone. He took it to the dealer and they swapped in 4 new ones. The problem was gone. Tires had no uneven tread. Chop or signs of a shifted belt. I have never been a fan of Goodyear tires.

12

Ive had a few sets in the past with no complaints. I want to see if I can rule out all the options before I go through the hassled of trying to get them swapped out.

13

Maybe trying to stretch 285-70-17s on to an 18" wheel has something to do with it…

14

Good eye, the one close up picture shows 17’s… @1QIKZ do you know you have 17" rims or are they really 18’s with 17’s stretched lol

15

OK, a little typo. Your prize should get to your house by Tuesday.

16

Pipe bomb?

17

OK, a little typo. Your prize should get to your house by Tuesday.

18

Pipe bomb?

19

UPDATE. Thanks to Andy for helping me out with some detective work yesterday afternoon. Based on some investigating, and brain storming, here’s what we came up with. Removing the drivers front wheel and balancing on his traditional tire balancer we noticed that rotating the tire mounting orientation on the tire balancing spindle yielded different weight balancing numbers. We also used a digital caliper to measure the distance from the edge of the lug bores to the edge of the hub bore to see if there was any variation. It wasn’t easy, depending on how you tried to get the caliper in there, and I’m not really sure it yielded much information.

Based on the varying weight numbers the balancer gave we’re of the thinking that the center bore of the wheel is not truly centered and that if the wheel was balanced off that center bore then the wheel would show being balanced until it was mounted on the truck and driven. Without using a lug centric balancing adapter, the wheel could not be truly balanced unless it was based on the lug method. If I’m not mistaken, Fuel’s website (wheel manufacturer) has already listed that these wheels are based on lug centric. With the oversized center bore concept to fit a wider range of vehicle makes / models I would not think they would be overly concerned that the center bore is truly centered. We also noticed a little bit of “up and down” motion at the tread surface when we hand spun the tire on the machine, leading me to believe the center bore is truly a little “un-centered”.

Here’s our thinking at this point. The only way to truly know if we’re correct is to have the wheels balanced with the lug centric adapter.

Here’s a video I found that I thought was helpful.

So, my most recent question is this. Does anyone now for sure if there’s a place locally I can go who might have such a balancing adapter for their machine?

20

I’ve balanced a lot of tires in my day and never once done one based on the lugs. Best of luck.