remained calm and just got off the phone with the toyota dealer. taking it back in next tuesday 8am. kicker is they have to try to fix it first BEFORE taking it bmw because of warranty issues. sad part is they are most likley going to take it to them in the end anyway. :lol: whatever...

 

Wow, typical dealer BS..... What a P I T A....I guess you will have to let them have a try, but make them test drive it with you in the vehicle when they are through. Don't give them any chance to send you on your way until you are thoroughly satisfied. I too have had to check behind dealer work only to find that this issue was NOT resolved and it wasn't until I pushed back that they caved and fixed my issue correctly.

GOOD LUCK

 

well said. dealer red tape at its best. most likley could have been resolved this morning. oh believe me, it will be driven before to show them the issue and after to make sure its fixed. leave it to me to pick one with issues. :lol:

 

What is the big deal? It cost me $60 to do all 4 wheels on gps9700 -- it will probably be what happened with my wheels.. i lost some weights after off roading..

 

Best of luck with your vibration woes.Not to be a downer but that vibration is not going away.At best maybe 90% will go away but it will come back.I did the road force balance etc and even with German built BBS 20" wheels and Michelin MTX tires it still has a slight vibration.
There was a post a while back of a member in the tire industry that did a nice write up on how to virtually eliminate 99% of it.It was a rather detailed write up with alot of wheel clocking etc etc.
I have just learn to drive past my vibration.This one of those FJ anomolies that you live with or can go crazy about.

Just wait till you start suffering from the windsheild blues.

 

I remembered i had copied the post and was going to have it done by a local shop with the Hunter 9700 but decided it was not worth it.Here it is so you wont have to go searching for it on the forum.

There seem to be a lot of people posting with tire vibration problems through the steering wheel around 60mph. i was one of them. i've had my FJ for a while now and have gotten it fixed with the help of another member.

The problem seems to be related to a very big and heavy wheel/tire combo, and the suspension not soaking up the small vibrations. The cause of the vibration on the road is not actually the balance, but the Road Force Number (basically if the tire is a little out of round). No tires are perfect but Michelins are historically the most round because of the way they are made. The roadforce number can be reduced.

Also i have noticed that the wheel locks sold by Toyota are 1 Gram off weight compared to the lugs. i noticed a difference on my Fj.

Make sure the tire shop has the Hunter 9700 balancer.

Here's the fix to print and take to your tire shop. if they follow this properly your vibration will be gone!

Please print this out for your tire tech, not many techs know how to do this. This will fix your steering vibration, once & for all, but allow up to 1.5 hours of actual labor & maybe replacing a tire or two. Why some FJ's are sensitive & some aren't, I don't know. I've heard many explanations & I dont know what to believe. Below is our best fix to date.

Start by using a wheel with 15mm or so of offset(on a 8.5" wide wheel), zero offset wheels dont seem to work when using a custom wheel, try to stick to a 275 or skinner tire, we've had some luck with 285's, of course the bigger the badder.

Using the Hunter GSP9700 with the latest software (older 9700 software wont work, uses a different mathmatical formula) with the Smart Weight feature: First, disable the smart weight, very important! Back cone the wheel and use the 6 on 5.5 front finger set up. Road Force & ForceMatch, must Forcematch the wheel & tire combo &/or the set to get each below 15 pounds of road force, the lower the better, even if it Road Forces pretty low, ForceMatch every tire any way, no reason to do it half ass. Also, it MUST only be out in the 1st Harmonic, if any tire/wheel combo is out in the 2nd, 3rd, ot 4th Harmonic, change it out, its not fixable. After this is all done by turning the tire on the wheel &/or swapping tires & rechecking the road force( write this # on each wheel), use the Dynamic balance mode to zero out the balance, then check in static mode, if needed add the 1/4 ounce or so, shouldn't need more than 1/4 ounce if any. If weight was added in static mode respin in Dynamic mode & make sure it still says zero zero (0.00 0.00) if it says OK OK it is still in SmartWeight system & it wont fix the problem! After all this you can put back in the SmartWeight mode and the two tires on the screen should just have a sliver of green on the bottom of the tires, this is good, if it shows more than about 1/10th of the tire in green then it need to be redone or replace the tire or wheel. Now put the lowest road force numbers(hopefull 6 lbs. or less) on the front of your FJ with Hub Centric wheels or with the Hub Rings installed(must be hub centric)!

Road Force Variation is : For every 10 pounds of road force in the assembly = 1/2 ounce of vibration at 50mph or 1/4 ounce vibration at 70mph, so 30 pounds of road force would equate to 1.5 ounces of vibration at 50mph but only .75 ounces at 70mph, this is one reason most vibration problems begin at 55ish and go tend away at 65ish & this can NOT be fixed by balancing!

Let me clarify the Harmonic thing, if an assembly is bad in the 2nd-4th Harmonic then that assembly it is NOT usable, but that doesn't mean the tire or the wheel is bad, just that that paticular marriage is no good , quite possibly the same wheel with different tire is okay or same tire on different wheel is okay.

(9-1-06) One other trick I forgot to post. On sensitive cars we like to raod force hot tires, drive on them for 4 miles or so & do the fronts, drive again & do the rears, it will road force way different hot than a clod tire, more of a real world fix.

Good Luck & Happy Motoring!!

 

i do have copies of said "fix" above. one is sitting at the bmw dealer, and the other will be going to toyota next tuesday. never going to get fixed? i have talked to several owners on here that have zero vibes thru the steering wheel. and yes, guess i can understand the proper channels this has to go thru at the dealer.

 

Hey how did you make out on the vibration issue.Was Toyota or the BMW dealer able to eliminate the vibration?

 

going in tomorrow 8am. sorry if i blew this out of the water. i have been really stressed as of late. 56 hour work weeks. and fact remains a new vehicle should not have any vibes in the steering wheel. i will make sure to take them on a ride so they can see first hand the issue. my dealer as been really great so far. i am sure this will get fixed. even tho i am at 3k, might as well have the 5k maint. done too. which is not much. i checked and cleaned my cabin filter yesterday. so just tire rotation, since they will be messing with it anyway.

on a side note: has anyone upgraded their dunlops at the dealer? just curious. did they give you any kind of discount towards what you wanted? i would love to have a better AT tire on there. but for now, i better just have them focus on the issue.

 

Sometimes, it really IS the wheel or tire that is too out of round to balance w/o vibration.

 

back from from service visit. sat in the waiting room way too long till we went on the test drive. guess i am pi**ing in the wind? both the service advisor and manager went with me on the drive. did not do it as bad, but did it. yes, it is there, but very faint. if you would grab the wheel with both hands you would never notice it. it was not nearly bad enough for them to allow warranty for a road force balance. they pointed out that the road surface can cause this too. maybe i am being too anal? :lol: i mean it tracks straight, no pull. maybe i am just not use to a toyota product? they did mention if it gets worse, bring it back. again, this is not a vehicle vibration. just a small amount of shimmy in the steering wheel at about 65mph. and not constant. we called it a morning. :simmadown:

on a side note i asked if any credit could be given if you swap out the dunlops for something better? she is going to look into it and call me back. i was maybe looking at the bfg at ta/ko or the goodyear duratracks.

 

toyota and D> did not match mount their wheels and tires.
if the shimmy is unbearable, i suggest u take it in to tire shop and tell them to match-mount the wheels and tires (red dot on S/W to match with wheel valve stem), which will make it as round as possible.
also, when balancing your wheels/tires, make sure to put the wheel with the most weights on the right/rear position of vehicle, since its furthest from the driver and steering wheel. hopefully that will get rid of any minor shakes.

 

I bought a new set of BFG-T/A KO'S-265X70X17 a local shop kowing they did not have a Hunter 9700 balancer. I did have considerable balance issues so I took the rig to the local Toyota dealer to get them roadforced. They told me my new tires were no good and they could not balance them. They told me if I had purchased the tires from them they would have replaced as many tires as many times as they had to to get a good set during the balance evolution. The problem is that I paid $400 less for the tires at the other shop. I went back to the shop where I bought them and showed them the roadforce printout. They replaced them with another set. The new new tires are about 90% vibration free. I am going to take them to a different shop to get them roadforced. Hopefully this set will make it. I dont believe they would give me a third set. I researched my tires and it seems BFG has a history of bad T/A KO'S. Sometimes it takes two or three sets to get a good one.

Brick

 

I think the problem is definitely the Dunlop Grandtrash. I just had mine put on again today after getting the snow tires off, and the 60-65mph shaky steering wheel was back. No vibrations in the vehicle, just the steering wheel, but it's definitely worse going around a curve on the highway at 65. I had that problem for the first 400 miles when I bought the FJ new back in December, but then I put on some Bridgestone Blizzaks for the winter and it was like I was driving a completely different, and better truck. With the Dunlops back on, I noticed the shake right away. I'll try to tolerate it, depending on how bad it is, but in the end I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and replace the Dunlops.

 

How much should one expect to pay for a road force balance? My Toyota dealership here in Maryland charges $100. Does that sound about right?

 

If that's for all 5 or even 4 tires, I'd say it's about right. Most tire shops near me charge around $13-$20 per tire for a standard balance depending on size. You should expect to pay slightly more than mount/balance price as they may take several attempts at road force balancing 1 tire