Tires: Put new tires/rims and have shimmy, torque wrench, hub rings

Question
QUESTION: Hello. First of all thankyou for your time. I have an 02 VW golf TDI. I originally had P195/65R15 Goodyear ultragrip tires with stock black rims with hubcaps. I recently installed P225/40R17 tires with core racing 17" rims. I now notice a bad shimmy. I feel it most of the time regardless of speed. The shimmy is CYCLICAL!!! I feel it for 3 or 4 seconds ... then it fades away for 3 or 4 seconds... and it goes back and forth all the time. I feel more vibration when braking indicating my brake pads need replacing and rotors are warped. However, i dont think brakes or rotors will cause a cyclical shimmy. I never felt this shimmy before with my original (winter) tires, but im thinking I feel it now due to the very low profile tires which have no give to them. Any suggestions? Also could you CC the email to jmdumalski@hotmail.com. Thanks!

ANSWER: Josh,

When you installed the 17" rims did they require a hub ring?  

It is fairly common for aftermarket rims to be sized to fit many vehicles and for a hub ring to be used to center the rim on the particular hub you have on your vehicle.

I have experienced several situations where the vibration is cyclical.  This is caused by the individual wheels to be going in and out of phase due to the slight differences in tire diameter and about 3 or 4 seconds is about right for this kind of thing.

Did you install the rims yourself or did someone else do it - particularly a guy with an impact gun?  Sometimes too much torque is applied to the lug nuts (in your case lug bolts) and it warps both rotors, and you may be experiencing that warping as a vibration.

That's the most likely causes, but there are others, so try looking at those first and post both if fixing those doesn't turn out to be it.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Here's the scoop. I priced out 17" core racing rims from Kaltire and found pair locally brand new from someone for cheaper.. never used as they were never balanced. Since they were Kal Tire tires there is free balance/rotation.. so I put them on my car and took them there. They rotated and balanced the tires and torqued them to the correct !90ft lbs. Kaltire said these rims do no require a hub ring, they just make them easier to put on and line up is what they said. Umm... the tires were installed by myself first (unbalanced) by hand.. i only drove 2 blocks to the tire station. There they used an impact gun yes. Then torqued by hand.

Answer
Josh,

I'll bet these require a hub ring.  Check with the rim manufacturer to get the specs.

Let me describe the procedure I use to tighten lug nuts.

1)  By hand screw on the lug nuts about 2 turns, making sure they don't bind and are not cros threaded.

2)  Use the impact gun on the lowest setting and just snug up the bolts.  The "rat-tat-tat" that normally comes out of an impact gun should come out as a "rat" - no "tats".

3)  Use a torque wrench to tighten to the final setting.  The nuts should move to be sure you are actually torquing the nuts and not just checking them.  If they don't move, then loosen and torque again.


I suspect the use of the impact gun warped the rotors.  Buy a torque wrench and do it yourself. then loosen the lug bolts a half a turn and retighten.   Hopefully this will solve the problem, but I'm betting the real problem is the hub rings.