A few weeks back I ordered a set of Hankook w300 snow tires from Discount Tire Direct mounted on 16" steel wheels for my 07 SI coupe. Installed them on Saturday only to discover that they are not balanced at all. The wheel starts shaking pretty badly at 30 mph, but I'm getting them rebalanced ASAP. They said that if I fax them the invoice they'll reimburse me. Can anyone verify how honorable they are in that regard?

What I'm worried about more is that there is a weird knocking noise coming from the front of the car when I make left turns only. Not just sharp turns in the parking lot either, but gradual lefts on city streets. It sounds a bit like bad CV joints but I have less than 12k on my car. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Can the knocking be a cause of poor balancing? Is there anything around the brake or suspension assembly that could cause it? Any information would be appreciated, thanks.

Peter

 

who installed the wheels on the car??? The person who installed the wheels should have taken a look at the wheels on the car while it was jacked up to make sure it cleared your suspension,brakes, and etc... Take it to the local America's tire down there or discount tire's which ever one is connected to Discount tire direct and have them look at it and make sure every thing was done properly and have them fix the balance it will be free. Same company!!!!

 

It could be a lot of things.

One of the easiest to check, and one of the most dangerous if you don't do anything about it, is it's possible that the lug nuts weren't tightened properly, and are coming loose. Check that first, before you drive it anywhere.

Also in that regard, make sure you're using the proper lug nuts for the wheels. Stock Honda/Acura wheels and lug nuts have a ball-shaped seating area (the area of the wheel that comes into contact with the lug nut). If the steelies have a tapered-shaped seating area, you will need to buy a separate set of lug nuts with the same shaped seating area (if they didn't send any with the wheels). See illustrations in the FAQ topic at the top of this forum.

Other than that, it could be a clearance issue in your wheel wells, or a suspension problem. You can double-check it by switching back to your summer wheels/tires. If the noises go away, it's definitely related to the new wheels/tires (it could be a problem with the wheels/tires, or it could be a clearance problem).

 

took off the wheel that I thought was the issue, checked to see if anything was rubbing, nothing. Re-tightened all lug nuts a lot harder and didn't hear the noise again. I guess they were too loose. Funny thing is I used the torque wrench this time, set to 80lbs and I literally had to go is a circle 7-8 times per wheel till all lug nuts were super tight in sequence. Even if I tightened one to spec, I'd come back to it again after doing the others and it would rotate even further. Never had that happen before. The lug nuts DTD sent were these open ended ones that didn't have a 'cap' to them, if that makes sense. Going to get wheels balanced tomorrow morning and after that I'll hopefully be all set for the snow season.

cliffs - don't rush putting on wheels, was in a hurry and didn't torque down wheels, thankfully avoided any damage.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by piotrush &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">took off the wheel that I thought was the issue, checked to see if anything was rubbing, nothing. Re-tightened all lug nuts a lot harder and didn't hear the noise again. I guess they were too loose. Funny thing is I used the torque wrench this time, set to 80lbs and I literally had to go is a circle 7-8 times per wheel till all lug nuts were super tight in sequence. Even if I tightened one to spec, I'd come back to it again after doing the others and it would rotate even further. Never had that happen before.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Interesting. I've never had that happen before, either. You might want to double-check the shape of the seating area, to make sure that it's the same on the lug nuts and the wheels. If it's not, they're not in contact across the entire seating area, and they can loosen easily. Again, Honda/Acura wheels and lug nuts both have a ball (radius) shaped seat, and aftermarket wheels usually have a tapered/conical shaped seat and should have lug nuts with the same shaped seat. See illustration below. (DTD should have sent the proper lug nuts for the wheels, but mistakes can happen anywhere.)

I tighten the lug nuts in a star pattern, tightening them most of the way when the tire is off the ground, using the torque wrench to make them pretty tight but not all the way to where it clicks. Then I lower the car to the ground, and then I torque the lugs till it clicks (at the full 80 pounds), which usually takes less than 1/6 turn on the torque wrench. I've never had any loosen that way.

 

the problem is that aftermarket steel wheels are like that. You feel like they are never going to tighten and then they finally do. for some reason i see this at work every time we put on one of these sets of wheels......... make sure you retighten them after 25 or 50 miles and then again after another 100 miles and then everything should be good

 

Yeah I tightened them last night some more, and I'll recheck again in a few days.

nsx: thanks for the pic, now I know what you mean. I almost asked them not to send the lug nuts bc on my set I used for the prelude I just used the oem lugs that came on the car w/o any issues. But the salesman convinced me otherwise.

 

OK, so it turns out I'm not an idiot after all! When I took them to get balanced turns out they were the wrong wheels. The center hole wasn't big enough to fit the hub so they didn't even sit flush at all, about 1/4" away from the hub, so since saturday my whole car was riding on nothing but lug bolts. I'm just glad nothing happened, and nobody got hurt. So now I have to call DTD and see if they're going to send me an new sen and take this one back or just send the wheels and reimburse me to have them mounted. In the mean time I hope it doesn't snow.