Wheel Balancing

I'm hoping someone can give me advice in regards to wheel balancing. Here is my story.

The car is a 2011 Mazda 2 and a while back I purchased a set of 15x7 et30 Kosei K1s. I work at Costco Tire so I took them to work and mounted the stock tires for the time being. I didn't want to get a new set until I wore em down. On the drive home I noticed my steering wheel shaking. This was odd because I balanced the wheels myself and I always do a really good job. I prevent the machine from rounding off the numbers and try to get it as close as I can to an actual zero imbalance. The next day I put em on the machine again and find that they are indeed balanced. I don't see any wobble from the wheels. The tires aren't perfect but I never had vibration with the stock wheels. I slapped on some really used RE11s and went for a drive on my lunch break. Still vibrating. I put the RE11s on the stock wheels and the vibration is gone. I changed out the hub centric rings that Tire Rack provided with some of our own ( they look identical ) and there was no change. I even changed out the lug nuts. I contacted TR and they told me to get it on a diagnostic balancer and if there was something wrong with the wheel runout I should send them the results. Well Costco didn't have one at the time so I spent $90 for a local shop to put them on a Road Force. The tech said two of the wheels are technically worse than the others but he'd be surprised if I felt shaking. Well crap, I guess TR won't be taking the wheels back. I caved and bought a set of MB Motorsport Weapons in a 15x7 et35 and chocked it up as a $400 loss. No vibration from the MB wheels.

Fast forward to present day and my shop got a brand new diagnostic balancer capable of measuring runout and wheel imperfections. Splendid. Dusted off the ol' Kosei K1s and rebalanced them. I even match balanced them with the tires. To my dismay...they still shake. Two of the wheels have rock solid graphs. Nearly straight lines. The other two have rather curvaceous graphs but nothing I haven't seen before. I've seen worse and never got complaints about vibration. I put the two worst ones on the back. What's weird about the vibration is I feel it in the steering wheel around 70mph...but sometimes I feel it in the floor and seat, like the rear wheels are vibrating. It's pretty much gone if I drive faster than 80mph.

I'm really scratching my head with this. No one at work seems to understand why they're vibrating. Zero'ed out, match balanced, hub centric rings, mating surfaces cleaned, new lugs gunned on with a 60ft/lbs torque limited gun, torqued to spec in the air with a "torque buddy", and air pressure set.

Any advice?

Whats the stock offset?? I see you've gone from 30 to 35mm between the different rims.. This will change your scrub radius, depending on aliment settings might be causing part of your issues.May need to run a little extra toe in or out to preload the suspension a little..

Also do you get the vibration with the tires rotated? Looks like you've ruled out tires after switching them on the rims to a different type..

Did you ever actually check axial and radial runout with a dial indicator, with the wheel mounted on the car? Maybe the bolt pattern is off center.

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Kenny_McCormic wrote: Did you ever actually check axial and radial runout with a dial indicator, with the wheel mounted on the car? Maybe the bolt pattern is off center.

This is the only thing I can think of also. wheel balancer uses the center bore to locate it, but your vehicle uses the lugs to determine center. Have no idea how you would be able to verify though.

In reply to Cone_Junkie:

By doing what I said, using one of these. Could laos be an off center bore, causing them to be balanced improperly.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Did you ever actually check axial and radial runout with a dial indicator, with the wheel mounted on the car? Maybe the bolt pattern is off center.

if the bolt pattern was off center the other wheels wouldn't run true, would they ?

In reply to wbjones:

The pattern on the wheel, not the car.

sorry … misunderstood .. my bad

but wouldn't that show up on the balancer ?

In reply to wbjones:

Balancer registers off the center bore unless you use a flange adapter.

This is why its best to measure runout with the wheel bolted to the car.

gotcha … thanks

In reply to skullsroad:

I have had this problem myself after visiting tire chain stores were they spin the nut on a turn then whack it with the impact wrench before the next nut touches the seat. After a couple visits and no resolution, their last diagnosis was bent rims, funny it did not shake with the old tires.

The fix, jack up each corner in my drive way, loosen the all of the lugs, snug them all so the wheel gets centered on all the lugs and does not get pinched by one off center when the rest are tightened. Torque all about 1/4 spec then finish them all. Repeat for next wheel.

No more shakes.

If the lugs where not on center, you would have issues when you put new rotors or drums on your car, unless the new rotors were machined with the lug holes off center the same amount as the hub, not likely.

My only other idea is that there is rust or oxidization, on the mating surface of the rotor or rim.

Hopefully one of these things helps Steve