Scared to drive with my new set of rims...

[TRD_PoW]

I just switched over to a set of sportsmax 940 wheels w/ 215/45 17-inch nankang tires F, lemme get you back on Rear.
I was driving back to home on the freeway, when I felt the steering wheel become extremely shaky and loose. My first thought was "oH SH*T, the studs on my wheels aren't torqued properly, and can fall off any second" Is this expected when just slipping on a new set of wheels? The ppl at BIG O who installed the wheels said its been hand torqued, and that I should come back after 100miles so they could check and retorque the wheels. This is my first time purchasing aftermarket wheels, so I don't know what to expect.
Somebody help me. I'm SCARED TO DRIVE FAST..0_o

[yosh]

When I got new wheels I noticed the steering being pulled around when driving in the middle lane on the freeway. Seems as though the grooves worn into the pavement coupled with the wider low profile tires cause this. Only happens in the middle lane. I guess it has the deepest grooves. Is it only on the freeway at high speeds?

[mspringer]

Do you have hubcentric rings?
Sounds like a balance issue.

[cam2Xrunner]

Chances are they did a shitty balancing job.. They probably did just a static balancing using only the inside half of the rim. They need to do a dynamic balancing where they use a sticky weight right behind the spoke and also on the inner edge of the rim.

Can you see if there are weights directly behind the spokes and also on the inner edge?

Also, what wheels are you using? Toyota uses lug centric wheels that should be balanced using the Haweka adapter.

http://www.gadgetonline.com/Vibration.htm

Chances are that this Big O does not have the adapter needed.

If they are using a "dynamic" balancing or rebalance the wheels using a dynamic balancing and you still get a vibration, you might want to look at getting the wheels balanced using the haweka adapter, as well as road force mounting/balancing.

Here's some info on Road Force Mounting/balancing from a Tundrasolutions thread, posted by Tundrasolutions.com member - DJ

Originally Posted by DJ @ tundrasolutions.com

When a tire/wheel assembly is "fixed up" using a GSP9700 road force balancer, it is a two phase process.

Phase 1 is to properly mount the tire on the wheel. In this case, "proper" means that, in layman's terms, the "high spot" of the radial runout of the tire is mounted coincident with the "low spot" of the radial runout of the wheel. This makes the tire as "round while rolling" as it can get, and thereby reduces vibration caused by the tire and/or the wheel being out of round. It's really a bit more complicated than that, but what should be obvious is that, so far, balancing weights haven't yet entered the picture.

Phase 2 is to properly balance the whole tire/wheel assembly by adding balancing weights as necessary. This reduces vibration caused by the center of mass of the tire/wheel assembly not being on the axis of rotation. As before, it's really a bit more complicated than that, but what should be obvious is that properly mounting the tire on the wheel is done before using weights to balance the assembly.

To put a finer spin on it, ALL wheel balancers perform phase 2, but only the Hunter GSP9700 (and its variants) performs phase 1.

So, what do "stick on weights" have to do with the price of tea in China? They are just a type of balancing weight that is useful with certain types of wheels.

In general, completely balancing a tire/wheel assembly so that it is in dynamic balance requires mounting weights in two different places on the wheel. In the trade, these are mounted one in each of two "planes". Think of a plane through the assembly that is perpendicular to the axis of rotation. Usually, one such plane is coincident with the inner lip of the rim and one is at the outer lip.

But, with some alloy wheels, there is no place on the outer lip to mount a weight. Not all is lost, however, because any two such planes will do nicely. So, in such cases, we can mount one "clip-on" weight on the inner lip and one "tape-on" weight somewhere else. With Hunter balancers, you can tell it exactly where the "plane" is that the tape-on weight will be mounted and it will compute exactly how much weight is required and show just where on the wheel to mount it. They will even let you "hide" the tape-on weights behind the spokes of the wheel so they aren't visible from the outside.

Finally, with really goof-ball wheels, you can use two tape on weights and dispense with clip-on weights entirely, and you can hide all the tape-on weights behind the spokes. And, it has nothing to do with road force balancing the assembly by properly mounting the tire on the wheel.

[TRD_PoW]

wOw thanks for the replys y'll. appreciate it. I'll give them a call and tell them what I'm experiencing. I"ll also consider all you guys said and make sure I find the correct answer, hopefully from them.

[RedPhoenix]

yeah im going to go with balancing, unless your rims are horribled warped like a pretzel.

[JMSinMD]

Im thinking you don't have hubcentric rings. A balancing issue isn't going to cause such a thing. Jon.

[Admiral]

^ I agree. Although if they did a really really bad job balancing, it might shake a lot too but i would think its hard to mess up balancing a wheel when a machine tells you where to put the clips. THey would have to be really incompetent or have a bad machine