There appears to be a lots of posts regarding, Wheel vibration, and uneven tyre wear.

The following may help. First you need to get your wheels balanced properly. Especially if you are running 20s. These will need to be road forced balanced. Basically this is a more accurate method of balancing wheels.

Next you will need a full tracking health check. Including toe , camber track ect

This will cost approx £150-200 and take around 2 hrs. How ever this will transform the handling of you car. Along with extend the life of your tyres. I use get appox 8-12k mile out of a set. With the above set up correctly you should get 20-25k per set.

Hope this helps.

Road Forced Balanced - please explain what is that and who does it

A friend of mine used to work for Aston Martin servicing the cars. He said they always balanced the wheels on the cars. Said not many places do that anymore but it is best because it allows for any imperfections on the car that might also effect the balance.

As you all know I had 4 tyres put on last week by kwikfit mobile. Drove it sedately for a few days and then when I speeded up to 80 ish it was scary with the vibration shimmer going through the car thought the wheels were going to fall off
Took it to another kwikfit garage who had to rebalance all the wheels because they hadn't been balanced correctly

Dives ok now

4 wheel tracking costs about £200. Done by STS. TDV6 - gone
TDV8 - gone
Audi Q5 3.0 Tdi Sline wef 6/11/10

Road force balance.

Places the wheel under a working load condition. Much more accurate way of balancing.

I've been running 20's with Contis for about 18 months now and I have had a lot of wear on the shoulders and more than the expected wear for approx 8k miles. I have approx 4 to 5 mm left.

I had them Road Force Variation Balanced at the time of fitting and 4 wheel alignment done, toe camber etc. Paid approx £180 for the alignment.

Whilst the RFV balancing cured the wheel shimmy issue between 55 to 80 mph, IMHO the 4 wheel alignment is only accurate at the time you have it done.

Speaking to the technician at the Wheel Centre, he said that the alignment can be affected in all variables by the the slightest of bumps. He described these as going over speed bumps, climbing kerbs, and not necesarily at excessive speeds.
Apparently moderate off roading is less of an issue as ground has more give than concrete kerbs.
His view on the issue was due to making large off road cars, like the RRS, perform on tarmac at speed and handle properly meant they were suspectible to being knocked out of alignment very easily through normal road use.

Solution would be to get the 4 wheel alignment done at regular intervals, not just when new tyres are fitted, as the tyres wearing will put the alignment out as well as any bumps.

This would sound sensible, but on a cost basis of doing it say every 6 months at £360 a year. If you expect the tyres to last say two years or 20kmiles, the cost of 4 wheel alignment starts getting close to the cost of a set of new Contis or similiar.

So to summarise I don't think it will make these tyres wear correctly for the cost.

But at least the car should drive better for the period as it would be in correct alignment more often.

CITYLADD wrote:

I use get appox 8-12k mile out of a set.

RFV Balancing also includes placing the tyre on the optimum point of the wheel for balancing.

This should mean that the wheel is more naturally balanced and would need less weights attached to it to acheive perfect balance. Although perfect balance is deemed to be within 5gms.

Apparently a wheel shouldn't have more than 100gms in weight attached to it, to acheive correct balance.

Must admit afte doing some research on RFV and speaking to my local Wheel Shop, I really can't see why 'basic' balancing is still offered from a safety point of view.

It might be down to cost, as RFV is more expensive than 'basic' balancing, and not all tyre retailers or alignment centres have RFV equipment.

Also, as per the related Wheel Shimmy TSB, on 20's with Contis wheel shimmy is still present at 55-80 mph until you have driven for a minimum of 10 miles.

I'm of the view that there is an inherent design fault in the Contis when fitted to 20's. But what do I know?

Whether RFV or "Thick {Kwik} Twit {Fit} on a machine whilst inspecting their knuckles..............either way, its all academic, our roads are shot to bits........the slightest divot will throw your balance out anyway. L322 Big Daddy SUPERCHARGED 5.0 Autobiography - Here & Now!

5 series for the miles

RRS S/C factory built HST - Gone

45 others have been and gone!

I've had LR pay for the 4 wheel alignment in the past and I can't say it made any noticeable difference to the wear of the Conti's. I certainly won't be paying £200 a go on a regular basis unless it suddenly starts pulling in anyone direction.

If I could find a garage that offers this RF balance then I could be tempted into getting it done........but then again I'm not paying for the tyres for another 2 years so maybe I'll wait till then



Anyone know of a garage in Beds, Northants,N Bucks or Oxon that does road force balancing  TDV6 - gone
TDV8 - gone
Audi Q5 3.0 Tdi Sline wef 6/11/10

Last edited by Josh on Tue Sep 22 2009 10:11am. Edited 2 times in total

Er..........xxxser........message sent from hand held pc whilst on my boat........... bit choppy here in Banus......

Will - the state of roads is even more relevant to 4 wheel alignmnet.

A nice wallop from a pothole has ruined £160's worth of alignmnet in one go. So preventing uneven tyre wear from 4 wheel alignmnet means weekly visits to the local alignmnet centre, and a hefty annual bill.

Don't think you get these problems with a Defender, so this is the trade off of a heavy 4x4 that handles at speed on tarmac - delicate suspension settings instead of girders.

As i said in my first post, 4 wheel alignment is only any good at the time it's done.