Bad tire or bent wheel?

[Jimmy9190]

This is about my 2001 Dodge Dakota. It is a 2 wheel drive with a 5-speed manual transmission, 153,700 miles on it now. I have been searching here and online and can not really find much info.

I have a set of BFG Long Trail T/A Tours on the truck, they will be 2 years old in February and only have about 12,500 miles on them now. I have rotated them twice here at home prior to this current problem. About 6 weeks ago I noticed a bad vibration at about 70-75 mph on the interstate. I had the tires balanced and rotated front to back, each on the same side at a local independent garage. It helped but I still had a bit of a vibration around 40 mph, it was more of a shimmy and vibration felt in the steering wheel. After reading online, I put new front brake rotors on and it helped but I still had a vibration when driving at exactly 40 mph. It felt like knobby tires and I felt it in the steering wheel. This vibration disappeared at about 43 mph.

I had a different shop balance the tires and they also rotated front to back, each on the same side. This put the tires back in the same position they were in when I first noticed the vibration at 70-75 mph. This second rotation/balance job eliminated a lot of the vibration but the guys at the shop that did the second rotate/balance job told me my front wheel bearings had too much play and should be replaced.

I did replace my front wheel bearings the weekend before Thanksgiving. After I put about 25 miles on the truck the right front wheel bearing went bad. It went bad in a really bad way too, howling and squalling real loud. I had a bad clunking noise when I would make a left turn, so that identified the right wheel bearing as the problem. One of the guys at the shop that did the first balance/rotation helped me figure that out, he spend a good 30 minutes with me and did not even charge me anything for the diagnosis. So I removed the bad wheel bearing, it was super hot after test driving that morning. I took it back where I bought it and they exchanged it for a new one. The old bearing was still hot when I got to the parts store, so I know it was definitely shot.

I came home, installed the new wheel bearing and also used a new spindle nut, torqued it to exactly factory specs which is 185 ft-lbs and reassembled the brake rotor and caliper. I reinstalled the wheel and still had the same vibration at 40 mph. I drove the truck 950 miles round trip to Atlanta and back for Thanksgiving, had no problems with it. This past weekend I rotated the tires again, did it my way which is crossing left front to right rear, right front to left rear, and left rear to left front, right rear to right front. Some say cross rotation is not necessary but that is how I learned it and it is also the way Dodge recommends to rotate tires on my Dakota. It is in my Dodge Factory Service Manual.

After I did this last tire rotation, the vibration at 40 mph is completely gone. So now I know that one of the rear tires or wheels is bad. I believe it is the one that is now on the left rear, because it came from the right front and that is the wheel that had a bad wheel bearing failure. I know it may have just been a bad part, but my theory is that either the tire is bad or the wheel itself may be bent and that caused the wheel bearing failure. I would like to know if this might be true? Has anyone ever seen a bad wheel or tire damage a wheel bearing/hub assembly? The guys at the second tire shop said the tires looked great to them but they did have to R&R and index one tire to its wheel to get to balance correctly. I believe that is the same tire that was on the right front and I have a theory that it is bad and is what caused my wheel bearing to go bad. The guys at the second shop said the tires were not balanced correctly at the first shop.

There is no vibration now of any kind at any speed. Truck rides smooth as glass. However, I know there is a problem with at least one of the rear wheels and/or tires so I still am trying to fix the problem. I am thinking the tire itself is bad. I have had 3 sets of tires on my truck and never had any vibration problems like this. I also have new upper and lower ball joints, new shocks front and rear, new inner tie rods, outer tie rods are Moog, they have about 60,000 miles and are still good, I also have new stabilizer bar links and stabilizer bar bushings. I torqued the lug nuts on all 4 wheels to exactly 100 ft-ls. Factory lug nut torque spec is between 85 to 115 ft-lbs.

I do not mind buying new tires or trying for a warranty exchange on the tires I have now if that is what is needed to fix the problem. I sure don't want any blowouts on the road. What do you guys think?

 

[gomes512]

My Jeep had an out of round steelie on the left front. Soon as I swapped to the rear the vibration went away.

I swung by a Discount tire and had the guy throw it on the balance machine and he didn't note any lumps on the tire itself. Was pretty obvious the wheel was out of round when the tire came off.

No idea how it happened, don't usually go out of my way to hit any potholes.

 

[JimPghPA]

Just a guess here, but on motor vehicles most wheel bearings that I have worked on run on a race that is press fit into the hub. That is to say, the actual race that the bearings ride on is NOT part of the bearing assembly. In industrial equipment often the race is part of the bearing assembly so that when you replace the bearings you are also replacing the race.

So if the race that the bearings run on was not replaced it very well could be that you have one or more bad race that these bearing ride on. That would explain the short life from the replaced bearings. Short life from new bearings is very un-common. You normally would have to do something like not grease the new bearings and or allow dirt or parts of broken bearing to contaminate the new, to get the new to fail is such a short distance.

So the questions are, did you remove all the old grease that may have had metal from bad old bearings? Did you press out or knock out old race and press in new race? Did you properly grease the new bearings with new grease? Did you do a spin test with the wheel on but not touching the ground after you installed the new bearings? Also, sometimes it is a good idea to re-tighten the nut after a couple of miles, and do the spin test again.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
Just a guess here, but on motor vehicles most wheel bearings that I have worked on run on a race that is press fit into the hub. That is to say, the actual race that the bearings ride on is NOT part of the bearing assembly. In industrial equipment often the race is part of the bearing assembly so that when you replace the bearings you are also replacing the race.

So if the race that the bearings run on was not replaced it very well could be that you have one or more bad race that these bearing ride on. That would explain the short life from the replaced bearings. Short life from new bearings is very un-common. You normally would have to do something like not grease the new bearings and or allow dirt or parts of broken bearing to contaminate the new, to get the new to fail is such a short distance.

So the questions are, did you remove all the old grease that may have had metal from bad old bearings? Did you press out or knock out old race and press in new race? Did you properly grease the new bearings with new grease? Did you do a spin test with the wheel on but not touching the ground after you installed the new bearings? Also, sometimes it is a good idea to re-tighten the nut after a couple of miles, and do the spin test again.


Thanks for the info but mine are sealed bearing/hub assemblies. The only thing to grease is the axle spindle itself, which got a light coat of semi-synthetic hi-temp grease each time when I installed the new hub/bearing assemblies.

I have not hit any potholes either that I know of but that does not mean I have not done anything to bend a wheel. I am thinking there must be some slight belt or other internal problem with one or maybe both rear tires or maybe there is a tread problem that the guys at the shop did not see. The fact that they had to index the tire on the wheel to get it to balance tells me something is amiss with that tire, not the wheel. I think I am probably looking at new tires to fix this problem.

I appreciate all of your help on this. Thanks.

 

[CapriRacer]

Jimmie,

There was a lot of extraneous information in your narrative, but there is also some contradictory info in there as well.

First, wheel end vibrations occur in the 50 to 70 mph range, but that's just a rule of thumb. It has been known that they sometimes occur just outside that range. So your 70 to 75 mph vibration is likely wheel end, but you 40 mph vibration might not be.

Second, these sorts of vibrations don't change speed range unless there is something else going on. So the change from a 70 mph vibration to a 40 mph vibration would indicate that the source of the problem is something other than the tire and/or wheel.

The wheel bearing is a complicating factor. It might be that the wheel bearing needs to be re-torqued to be fully seated - and the small amount of vibration you normally get is setting off the truck.

And from you title, it sounds like you've decided it is the wheel and/or tire. I would not neglect the fact that a small amount of vinration is presnet in every tire and wheel assembly - and that vehicles have a threshold below which you don't feel those vibrations. Your vehicle may have had an issue with the bearing (or somethign else) and that was the original source of the issue.

AND ::drumroll:: Some bit of psychology I have encountered in my travels:

It seems that once a driver has experienced a vibration, he can focus in that sensation and he becomes sensitized to it. We've even encountered sitauions where we've eliminated the vibnration (at least from the tire and wheel perspective) and had the driver report that the vibration was still present. In those situations, we suspected that the engine, drivetrain, and road related vibrations are what was being sensed, but we never got around to proving that.

So be careful that you aren't sensing something that is either no longer there or at a level that used to be acceptable.

 

[Jimmy9190]

I tried to give all of the info and explain everything that has been done since the vibration first started. I know it was a very long post. I had a bad vibration at 40 to about 43 mph. If I held the speed at exactly 40 mph it felt like I was riding on big old knobby 4 wheel drive type tires. I felt the vibration in my hands through the steering wheel. The truck also made the same type of noise you might associate with running mud tires on dry pavement. I have already re-torqued the spindle nuts twice.

I rotated the tires in a cross pattern, moving the front wheels to the rear and the vibration went away. This tells me there is something wrong with the tires or wheels that are now on the rear of the truck. The fact that the tire tech had to re-index a tire on its wheel also points to a possible tire problem.

I read a good many reviews on tirerack.com last night and found that there are a lot of other folks out there who have had trouble balancing BFG Long Trails. I don't really want to buy new tires but I don't want to ignore a tire problem either. Right now the problem has only been masked by moving the problem wheel to the rear where there is less weight so I don't feel it now. Even though I don't feel the vibration and the truck rides smooth now, I know the problem still exists and I will keep after it until I get it resolved.

 

[Cressida]

I would check the rear tires by feeling them for a slipped belt.

 

[Rand]

It doesnt really matter if its a bad tire or rim.

isolate which one is doing it and take it in for repair.

IF you had them road force balanced likely it would have been caught long ago..

the number 1 reason I only do road force balancing if I mail order tires.

the easiest way to figure out which one is to rotate front to back on one side at a time till it changes.

ie drivers side front to back. if it changes and you feel it in the steering wheel you found it.. if not do the other side.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Thanks for the info. I plan on rotating the tires one at a time tomorrow. I hope to be able to find the one that is bad and then I will take it back to the tire store and have it checked out. I have not called them yet so I don't know if they have do road force balancing. I hope they can help identify the problem and possibly offer some warranty help if the tire is bad.