Wondering if you guys could help me out with some crazy vibrations that I'm having. This is my first winter with the 07 G35x and I bought 4 new Michelin Alpin Pilot PA3 (225/55/R17) and for the first time I decided to get steelies for winter rims.

I went down to Active Green and Ross in Ottawa who have done good work for me in the past to have them installed. They supplied the steelies after looking it up on the database and finding one that matched my car.

Right after I noticed that around the 110-120 mark on the highway I was getting vibrations in my ride. Significant vibrations. So I took it back and they claimed it wasn't balanced properly so they rebalanced everything for free no fuss no muss. I took it back on the highway today and... although the vibrations are much less as I get closer to 120 or when I take my foot off the accelerator to slow down from 120, the vibrations come right back.

Is this just a matter of balancing the tire? I was told that the since the steelies were aftermarket they might not have a perfect fit and as such can cause vibrations. I was going to call Active Green and Ross again but I thought I'd check with the forum first if I'm up a creek

It really sucks losing my smooth ride in the G

 

Take it back until they get it right, otherwise give them back the tires and rims and get a different set.

Tires might be defective, the rims could be defective/bent or their balancer may simply be out of wack. If they made improvements with rebalancing it's a good chance that's what the problem is.

 

Also...
One of the problem using steelies is that they usually aren't hub-centric.
They are often just a generic large hub with a 4.5" bolt pattern.
I hate to say it but for someone that does highway driving, they probably aren't the best choice.

 

I think it would be bad balancing. On my family Matrix we got steelies and they are fine but there was an instance where I also had a shop balance them and they didn't do it right... I went back 1 or 2 times to correct them. The machine they are balancing on can be part of the problem.

BTW, the vibrations also started for me around the same speed you mentioned.

 

Very good point.

I've got them on H's Mazda and so far are working great. $90 for virtually new ones was too hard to resist.

 

I think the smaller the diameter the better with steelies.
We have them on my daughters Honda with no problems.

 

^these are 16" x 6.5" that came off an '08 Honda. Hub was close but doesn't help with mount. I wanted alloys but after 2 months of looking around couldn't find anything used or cheap new.

 

Make sure there is no snow or chunks of ice frozen to the back of the steelie...(or front for that matter) You would be amazed what a little snow caked to the inside of 1 rim will do to your ride.

Dealing with this right now......

 

I had that problem with steelies on my Maxima. I would park it after driving through snow and slush, then the next day I would have major imbalance. I discovered the snow and water would settle and freeze on the inside of the rim. I had to hit the DIY carwash to melt the ice from the inside of the rims. I got rid of those in a hurry.

 

^good for you. That would be very annoying to deal with. Those are summer wheels only!

 

Good point Wayne.
My OE truck wheels were bad for that too.

 

I took the car back to the store. After about 5 more seconds of thinking about it I really did not like that my girlfriend's Chevy Optra was getting a smoother drive than me.

They took it back and saw that there was an imbalance. They re-balanaced all the tires again just to be safe and I took it out on the road. Although the ride was considerably smoother, soon as I hit the 110-120 mark More vibrations. I feel like I can power through the vibrations but its definately still there (once again the Optra has become my benchmark....). I took it out right after they fixed it to avoid any snow/slush issues

I took it back to them and they let me come and watch them work. The guy working there told me that on Nissans hes noticed that when putting on steelies hes noticed that sometimes the rim should be held centered while its being put on. They did this (again) to all the wheels and still could not find the problem.

To their defense they've been pretty good about all this. They haven't charged me anything, made appointments pretty quickly and have rebalanced it twice without complaints. The next step is they've volunteered 4 new steelies. The only reason they're not on right now is beacuse I've taken off to Halifax for the holidays.

They're using the MACPEK X42755 steel rims http://catalogue.macpek.com/auto-res...5X&a=2007&d=17

Unfortunately the website doesn't appear to have much information on the rim itself and I'll admit I didn't do much research into steelies as I should have to know if these were too generic. I had a hard time even finding steelies in the right size.

There was a G37 there that got the same steelies but used Michelin xIce instead. So far there have been no complaints.

 

tires are sometimes screwy. like rbull said above.. sometimes could be the rim, sometimes the tire.. sometimes a mixture of both.

my dad used to have an mb e350. one day he noticed a weird vibration in the car... i could feel it too. took the car in.. they ended up balancing the wheels 3 times and every time the vibration was there. he ended up going to a tire place with a newer hunter machine.

turned out one of his tires were bad. the techie claimed that the steel belt inside must have shifted slightly. neither of us had ever heard of such a thing... i didn't even think that something like that was remotely possible. but sure enough, as soon a replacement tire was put on the vibration was totally gone.

 

The tire place did mention that the chain in the tire may be the source of the problem as well. It is supposedly pretty rare and I've never heard of it before either.

If the new rims don't fix the problem, they said they'd call Michelin to see what they could do about replacing the tires.

 

I just got the exact same set of winters on my coupe no problems here =S