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Odd vibration

3K views 25 replies 17 participants last post by  NotARaidersFan 
#1 ·
Has anyone here experienced this strange vibration that only happens at highway speeds of 65 plus. It is like a wheel out of balance but has a "pattern" to is and is not the routine bouncing. It has a cycle to it. Man this is hard to describe. Anyway most likely is a bad tire and I have scheduled the dealer to do a road force balance job to find out what the deal is. I how have just over 900 miles on the 05 6speed.
Any ideas?????:banghead
 
#3 ·
srpbaer said:
Has anyone here experienced this strange vibration that only happens at highway speeds of 65 plus. It is like a wheel out of balance but has a "pattern" to is and is not the routine bouncing. It has a cycle to it. Man this is hard to describe. Anyway most likely is a bad tire and I have scheduled the dealer to do a road force balance job to find out what the deal is. I how have just over 900 miles on the 05 6speed.
Any ideas?????:banghead
Not so far but where are you feeling it? In the wheel or in the body or seats? I think the right place to start is to have the wheel/tire balance checked then go from there.
 
#5 ·
C1Trob...that is it exactly... a steady repeative pattern.

Smokin' Joe...now if you are goin' hang here you gota read the post first...I indicated I have already scheduled the road force balancing!!! (just kiddin") by the way dude..I drove Nascar for almost 7 years in Richmond, Va. years ago. I dorv cars owned by Junie Donlovey if you remember his name (this was before your time)..So you will know he owned the Winston Cup cars that Dick Brooks drove the old number 90 . Do you remember that ??? I drove back in the late 60's at Southside Speedway and shared a garage with Lennie Pond who won Talladaga in 1973!!!
Sorry for the rant
See ya guys:lol
 
#6 ·
Yep, I've heard/felt that.

It's the tires/wheels. In my case it started after I bent a front rim. A simple matter of slipping of the edge of the pavement at about 40mph. This also caused a misalignment.

Rebalancing fixed some of the problem, but I should have had the front end realigned too. That failure to act, lead to unevenly worn tires, with the result of both wheels vibrating at different frequencies. It's the differing frequencies that beat against each other and cause the vibration to seem to come and go.

To be clear, a wheel speed vibration, that comes and goes, means that more than one wheel/tire is out of balance. If they are worn badly enough no amount of balancing will fix the problem.

In order to reclaim that silky smooth ride, I had to replace all four.
 
#9 ·
If you feel this cyclic pattern in your seat it may be the rear wheels that need to be balanced. If you feel it in the steering wheel it may be the front wheels that need to be balanced.
 
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#10 ·
A little of both

The cyclic pattern is known as a beat frequency in electronics. It is the combination of two frequencies that are different. Perhaps you have a slight imbalance in a front wheel (smaller diameter, higher frequency) interacting wioth a slight imbalance in a rear wheel (larger diaeter, lower frequency) that is producing the repetitive cyclic vibration.

I had it in mine and Freeway Chevrolet did a force balance on all 4 wheels and it went away. They moved a small amount of weight on one of the fronts and removed one of the stick-on segments from a rear........

Mikey
 
#12 ·
Root cause requested

When you take it to the dealership, tell them you want to identify which wheels were out of balance and how far. They should be able to tell you exactly what each one looked like coming off the truck and then how much they had to change to get each wheel in balance. Post a quick reply here to document your findings. It is really good to close the issue out.

Regards,

Mike
 
#13 ·
I posted in another thread about this very issue with my 05 SSR. I had out of round tires on the front (both) and even after having them replaced I still had the "out of balance" vibrations in a cyclic fashion.

I found a shop that could perform "road force balancing". It cost quite a bit more than regular balancing, but it was well worth it in my case. They find out how much road force is being produced as the tire spins and the balancer will identify how much to move the tire on the rim to hopefully greatly reduce the amount of force produce by the tire and thus (likely) far less weight to balance the tire/rim combo.

OMG what a diference. I had one of the "new" front tire/rim that was producing over 40 lbs of road force. They stated that below 10 lbs was great and up to 15 would be ok. They were able to drop the road force on that one 40 lb tire/rim down to 8 lbs. I only had one rear tire/rim that was in balance and with 14 lbs of road force and the balancer could not reduce it below the 14 lbs.

When I took my 05 SSR back out on the freeway, I couldn't believe it was the same SSR.

I'm a true believer in road force balancers (Hunter 9700 series I believe).

Hope that helps.
 
#14 ·
srpbaer said:
Has anyone here experienced this strange vibration that only happens at highway speeds of 65 plus. It is like a wheel out of balance but has a "pattern" to is and is not the routine bouncing. It has a cycle to it. Man this is hard to describe. Anyway most likely is a bad tire and I have scheduled the dealer to do a road force balance job to find out what the deal is. I how have just over 900 miles on the 05 6speed.
Any ideas?????:banghead

I found that if the top was down at the speed, and the vibration was present,.. all I had to do was scouch down in my seat some and get my ears out of the wind. It also helped if I closed my mouth. When the top is up I have no vibration. I hope this helps. :thumbs
 
#15 ·
Probably the wrong thread, but

it's worth sharing when you find a solution, as Focks so aptly shows. My wife located the definitive source of the loud squeal at WOT. Only happened when I drove, and my wife swears it came from directly behind the steering wheel! :skep
 
#16 ·
I will certainly keep all informed. It wil be a few days before the dealer will get the truck due to snow that happens to appear almost each weekend including this one. I don't drive the truck in bad weather or wet or salty roads.
Again thanks to all for the help..this forum is great...Incidently not only do I hear this I really feel it in both the seat and the steering wheel. At 70 mph is shakes which makes me fee it is a tire/wheel issue.
See Ya:)
 
#17 ·
Focks said:
I found that if the top was down at the speed, and the vibration was present,.. all I had to do was scouch down in my seat some and get my ears out of the wind. It also helped if I closed my mouth. When the top is up I have no vibration. I hope this helps. :thumbs
Thanks for the "tip" but my ears and teeth are quite abit smaller than yours!!!!
If you have the top down it has to slow you down a good 10mph . This is based on avatar!!!!
Have a good one you "Head Case":jester :jester
 
#18 ·
srpbaer said:
At 70 mph is shakes which makes me fee it is a tire/wheel issue.
See Ya:)
Mine was a slight vibe that started at about 70 and seemed to peak at 85. It had the ashtray (useless device) rattling so much that we had to leave it open. Just the slight rebalance on the wheels solved it. Thoroughly tested it that weekend:eek , as we were traveling in the caravan to Laughlin.:jester

Sorry to hear you are being snowed this weekend.

Mike
 
#20 ·
Mine was temporary

Last week I had a bad steady, repeated vibration. It happened right after a snowfall. I suspected it was ice frozen to the wheels or drive line. The next day, after it warmed up a little, the vibrations went away. :)
 
#21 ·
Focks said:
I found that if the top was down at the speed, and the vibration was present,.. all I had to do was scouch down in my seat some and get my ears out of the wind. It also helped if I closed my mouth. When the top is up I have no vibration. I hope this helps. :thumbs
Focks,
I hope you're not out there riding around with your mouth open!:glol :glol
 
#22 ·
I had a vibration on the front end and I had the dealer check the wheel bearings. The floor tech said it was tire balance which caused tire feathering. I then insisted that their front end guy check the bearings. What to my surprise did the front end guy find - A LEFT FRONT WHEEL BEARING THAT WAS GOING BAD. Warranty replacement and the vibration went away..
 
#23 ·
Just back from the dealer who looked at the vibration issue..Turns out that I have the correct driveshaff (no damper) but I have three (3) tires that would not pass the road balancing test,,,So...three new tires are on order...I just had these balanced not two weeks ago and the tire store said nothing at all. ANyway should I insist a complete set of tires or just get the three and shut up????
I await your replies!!!!!!:banghead
 
#25 ·
Tires

They will only replace those tires that do not meet the specs. I know because I had the same problem and they did only 3. Had to have the tires ground force balalnced and it did a better job of getting it right. Still just a bit of vibration but not so noticable as before. Not so sure that it is the tires or wheels at this point but as the tires wear out it will beinteresting to see if the next set of tires (definitely not RSA's) will have the same problem. Had to go to a tire shop that had a road graound force machine because the dealership did not have one and couldn't fix the problem after 4 trys.

Wally
 
G
#26 ·
srpbaer said:
...It wil be a few days before the dealer will get the truck due to snow that happens to appear almost each weekend including this one. I don't drive the truck in bad weather or wet or salty roads.
Again thanks to all for the help..this forum is great...Incidently not only do I hear this I really feel it in both the seat and the steering wheel. At 70 mph is shakes which makes me fee it is a tire/wheel issue.
See Ya:)
I have the same problem on both fronts--pampered SSR stays in garage when the weather is bad (it's been snowing/raining often lately) and steering wheel vibration.

I just bought the 06 manual a few weeks ago. Within a week I noticed the a vibration at 70 MPH. I took it to the dealer and had them check the wheel balancing. They confirmed my suspicion that one of the wheels was out of balance. When I picked it up, the mechanic had gone home for the day so I wan't told which tire was unbalanced. After the balancing the vibration went away. Within another week the vibration returned.

After talking to a friend who drives a BMW M-Roadster (read high horse-power and torque), he had a similar vibration problem. Apparently his stock tires had problems staying put within the rims, i.e. one rear rim would slide inside the tire when applying heavy throttle. When the rim slides inside the tire, it causes the wheel to become unbalanced. I plan on chalk marking my tires to see if they are slipping.

Once the weather improves I'll take it back to the dealer and see about getting a "road force balancing" (if the chalk lines don't move) or having the tires replaced (if the chalk lines do move). My SSR came with Goodyear H-rated tires. If the problem turns out to be the tires and if the dealer intends on replacing the bad tire(s) with Goodyear H-rated tires, I may just tell them to forget it and I'll get some good Y-rated tires instead.

In any case, I'll post my conclusions once I have some.
 
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