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i know my crappy little steel wheels are threatening to assimilate this entire section, but...

is there ANYTHING that would be likely to be causing the severe shaking sensation coming through first the wheel, then the centre console, then the entire car as the speed rises? It's kind of convenient that its only become apparent since i had the tyres changed, but maybe something else that just happened to go at the same time (or a little before, as the 20 or so miles beforehand were at 50 or less) is to blame....????

swapped over onto the 145 "spares" that were still in the boot whilst in car park in notts, after a bone jarring ride in (even though i didnt dare go past 80)... didnt seem to help matters much (+5mph maybe), however they havent seen any kind of balance for ages and are probably just naturally wobbly by now.

worried that it's causing damage to the car, but it might in itself be a sign that something else is frotzed. dont wanna end up with a huge ovum on my face after complaining to the garage, if the micheys turn out to be perfectly balanced and its the car thats screwed.

It sounds as though you could have a faulty shock absorber, or two.

My green MK3 did, and that's exactly what it did.

Sounds pretty scary. It could be a whole host of things steering related; bushes, track-rods; wheel bearings. But the most likely thing is the tracking. Get it checked boyo!

right i'll take a peek at the shocks (they had rust bubbles on before so who knows). one track rod's been replaced in the last few 1000 so its possible the other is knacked. dont know anything about bushes except uncle said a while back my ARB bush was probably dead.
tracking hasnt been done for a couple years and could well be all over the shop.

and one of my front bearings has got noisy, either that or its unaccustomed sound from a possibly overinflated pair of fairly hard, high-profile skinny tyres put on as an emergency measure. didnt want to mention it straight away as it may well be caused by the judder rather than a cause of it.

anything in that list that could have been sent gonzo by the act of having the tyres swapped round (or the wheel jittering away for 60+ miles)?

hoping double hard with crossed fingers it's all in the wheels. an excuse to get alloyed up?

May just be wheels not balanced properly, i think i have a warped brake disc as upon braking my steering wheel almost snaps my arms as it jumps left and right at high speed.

It was a track control arm on mine when it was doing that. Same symptoms besides the centre console shaking cause I don't have one!

balls............. hrm

well i may spend a morning swapping round all the tyres i have (4 pairs after all) to see if any of them are balanced enough to prove that its the wheels

oddest thing - on the 145s, around 70mph... the shake faded in and out, rhythmically, over a few seconds. very very strange.

Well, they agreed without complaint to rebalance them, though it took them a long f***ing time to get round to telling me it was done, though i saw the guy put em on the machine and then remove them after (thought there was another step to go!). Supposedly he was gonna show me that it was 0.00 balance but that never happened, couldnt be arsed in the end, just slapped em on and went for a blast.

It's improved things - showing that there WAS something wrong with their balance - but not cured it. Maybe their machine is busted, perhaps they're crap at balancing, or maybe the wheels are now fine and something else is at fault.
It's still more shakey than it was the week before I had the new tyres put on, but I should now at least be able to go the 30 miles up the m42/a42/m1 and the return at full pelt without being shaken to death now, and 70 is smooth. Still pretty rattly however above 80, and will need further fettling.

Wierdest thing is there's now a strange "gyroscope" feeling to the steering at those speeds, like it's harder to turn than usual. Like if you've ever played with a gyroscope, or spun a bike wheel real fast off the ground and tried to turn it. Very unnerving when it starts to affect how well you can keep centred in a motorway lane.

Think that i'll go to some other place and get the balancing and tracking sorted (if it wasnt bad before, it probably is now with all the shake that the cars been subjected to).. leave those jokers to rot.

Grrr.

Any reccomendations for good tracking places?

Tahrey1043 wrote:
Any reccomendations for good tracking places?

almost anywhere with a computerised 4 wheel alignment set up...

as long as they stock all of the high end performace tyres & wheels then you know they have 'invested'..

although really depends on the operator on the day

i dont live in kensington mate

a rack of tyres (any tyres) ready to go rather than the place having to order them for you ahead of time is a sign of class in these parts...

kwikfit do the job alright you think? been reccommended there of all places! (plus the sods have just got a new sale on this week - Pirelli P3000s and Dunlop thingies for silly money... 45 a corner all inclusive for 165/65s... bugger!)

Tahrey1043 wrote:i dont live in kensington mate

a rack of tyres (any tyres) ready to go rather than the place having to order them for you ahead of time is a sign of class in these parts...

kwikfit do the job alright you think? been reccommended there of all places! (plus the sods have just got a new sale on this week - Pirelli P3000s and Dunlop thingies for silly money... 45 a corner all inclusive for 165/65s... bugger!)

neither do i ! if I did I'll be in a GT2

although nothing wrong with part warn tyres, if you are london based try

www.montyswheelsandtyres.co.uk

birmingham... and the rubber aint entering into it right now so much as the steel it sits on

problem's still there, and whats more... its getting worse. its coming back at all speeds north of 40 now, up to however fast i can make the car go

please, some one on here must have an inkling of a good point to start at, before i just leave it with the local garage for a couple days with the instruction "find everything wrong that you can so i can write it off"

Find a friendly mk2/3 owner, borrow their wheels for a quick drive, see if that's where the problem lies or if you should be looking elsewhere? Probably the easiest way of doing it.
Feel free to borrow my wheels if you can't find anyone close than 100 miles

well if i can be arsed dragging my old black steels out of the garage again i'll try one then the other set, but i'm pretty sure it aint the wheels. not after 4 balancing runs.

might be a bit moot anyway after i kerbed them in GRAND style coming back from the nick last night round a small (not mini) roundabout... can usually take it happily at 35.. did the damage at under 25. *shame*