Brought it in for oil change and front pads/rotors. Prior to this, slight vibration, but tolerable. The 20" Conti DWS tires are on year 7 and shot, so I knew I was just delaying the inevitable, but I was trying to get this season out of them.
Take it home and the front shudder is stupid from 105-135km/h. Talked to the shop and confirmed pads, rotors, oil change, tires on/off, that's it. I have the H&R hub centric spacers, but never any issues.
So, I try a local shop to balance the tires and they said tires too shot. Bit the bullet and tossed new Contis on. Same vibration.
I was north for the week, so I found a place with a road force balancer, calibrated the day before. Balanced, but no major improvement.
Back to the shop to see if anything else loose in the front (thinking a joint, steering joint (I've already done it once) or something).
Shop tried:
- Road test (yep, it vibrates like crap)
- All tires on the balancer. Minor variances, but no smoking gun. He didn't want to re-balance as his machine wasn't calibrated and I've sworn off his machine (I go to proper tire places for balancing).
- Spacers off (yep, still vibrates)
- He had his old 3.0 X5's winters, so he tried those, no spacers (yep, still vibrates)
- Figuring the last thing left was pads/rotors, tossed a new set on, different brand of each (you guessed it - still vibrates). This time though, the right side was cooking hot.
- Tossed on new/rebuilt calipers and vibration nearly gone. I need to get to a better balancing machine to get it back to near perfect again (well, as good as a 350,000km carcass can get
).
So, if you happen to run your pads/rotors to the full end of their life, the pistons are nearly all the way out for a while. Shoving them back in rusty, dirty calipers apparently causes some stickiness and inherent vibrations. First I've had this over my many years of car ownership, so sharing in the hopes it'll help someone else.
I technically could have deferred the $$ new tire set and several balancing attempts. Ugh.