You want to know if they feel it in the steering wheel, or in the driver’s seat, or in the brake pedal – the location is key to helping diagnose where the shake is actually coming from. If a customer comes to you complaining of a vibration, your first question should always be “Where exactly are you feeling this vibration?” At first glance, this looks minor, but that slight bend caused a serious vibration problem that required a new wheel. The art of diagnosing vibration issues begins by determining which of these is actually happening, or whether some other cause is present. Today’s vehicles are extremely sensitive to even the slightest tire/wheel imperfection. Either the wheel is bent or the tire is not completely and truly round (steel belts are improperly aligned, there is hidden delamination, damage from a pothole, etc.). Most vibration problems are caused by the wheels or tires being out of tolerance in some way. So, here is a primer on bent wheels, out-of-round tires and how to diagnose vibration issues.įor a car to run smoothly requires that the transmission of contact forces between road and tire to be achieved within very tight tolerances. That’s not actually a difficult process, but it’s one that requires some care and knowledge that is not often included in the basic get-in-there-and-do-it training that most tire techs get. One problem that we often encountered was that many tire technicians tended to have trouble properly diagnosing the causes of certain vibrations, especially in terms of distinguishing a bent wheel from an out-of-round tire. Many of our customers came to us by way of other tire dealers, where their tire techs had identified an issue and referred the customer to us for repair. I spent many years managing a wheel repair shop where our primary business was straightening wheels that had been bent. Whether it’s from a pothole or a curb, a bent wheel can often be fixed – provided there isn’t additional hidden damage.
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