Tire balance problem
 

:confused:

Ok, so I got new front tires last week at the tune of $860.00 Now I have a some serious vibration when driving 50-65mph. I took the X back to the tire shop last night and they ended up pulling all four wheels off and found one of the back tires was 5ounces off. The guy said that it should be ok now. Well, its not, in fact it didn't help at all. Could there be something wrong with the new tires other than balance? Any idea's?

Where they put on correctly? I mean, not backwards (rotation)? :dunno:

Hmmm.... I don't know. Guess I didn't realize a tire could be put on the wheel wrong. I will go take a look. Thanks

Well, they look the same as the back tires - nothing appears to be wrong.

My only other suggest would be to take the wheels to another tire place and have the balance checked. Even if it costs a few dollars you'll know...

Look here, it might help:
http://www.yourtireprotection.com/cl...leshooting.htm

Sometimes even new tires can be defective and I've certainly heard of that happening more than a few times. Sometimes it helps to remount and rebalance the tires - spinning the tire on the wheel 180 degrees before rebalancing. You can also try taking a look at the balance of the wheels without the tires mounted just to see how "good" they are without tires. Are your wheels OEM BMW wheels? Also, is your X aging? Could it be a control arm problem? Just a few thoughts... GL!

Yes, they are the OEM Wheels. My X is an 02 w/ 48000 miles. It had no problems before I got the new tires. I ask they guy's at the shop if there could be a problem with the tires themselves and they said the quality control on tires this expensive was so good that they don't think it would happen. I am not sure what a control arm problem is - sorry, I am a girl :(

818guy - thank you for the web site. I will take the X back and have them take the tires back off the wheels and rotate them. Hopefully that will work.

No problem. Good luck. Trouble-shooting can sometimes be a real pain in the rear.

Hunter road force balance!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Sometimes the only way to tell if the tire is defective is with a road force balance. I had a new set of Perrilli's were one failed the road force balance and they gave me a new one which solved the problem.
Only a few shops have the right equipment to do this.

http://www.gsp9700.com/pub/technical/4202T/5THEO004.cfm

No apologies allowed! That's what we're here for - to help with these fun & exciting issues we have with our beloved X5s. A control arm is part of the steering assembly. When the bushings wear out and begin to loosen up, they can cause the symptoms you describe. I think it's fairly common for them to wear out a bit more prematurely than we think they should - lots of discussions about them. Hope all goes well for you & let us know how you make out!

:thumbup: Thanks guy's!!! I will take it back and see what they can do. The vibration does make me a much better singer - I think I could win American Idol if I could sing in the X :rofl:

MD4.6, you don't have to apologise cause you're a girl!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, problem found!!! So it turns out one of the back tires has gone bad and it was just weird timing that it to happen when the front tires were replaced. What sucks is that the back tires still had plenty of tread on them but because its an AWD the tire shop said not to just replace that bad one. They said Michelin would give a credit for the bad tire but not the other. I guess Michelin in one of the hardest companies to deal with when this sort of thing happens. What I also learned was Michelin Diamaris are only rated for 20,000 miles - :wow:

Did they do an alignment as well? Maybe the old tires were cupped and with the new (straight) tires any misalignment there may be now makes itself evident...also, some tire stores are not totally expert at using inner-rim wheel weights (as opposed to the crimp on types on plain vanilla vehicles...I had the same problem on a Volvo R car.

The did the alignment as well. They said having to put 5ouces of weight on a tire that had been on the car for awhile was a sign of something going on. So they stuck the spare on and the vibration went away. Thanks for the imput.