3/2019, 11K Miles, Hit pothole put bubble in L/F tire; installed 2 new tires on front. No damage to suspension or wheel was detected. Tire balancer did not read excessive road force or out of roundness. 4 wheel alignment performed
No vibration detected
Tires were never rotated until replaced as new tires on front always had more tread left.

4/2021; 18K Miles; Road over cement median divider (not a curb) from stop to not more than 5 mph. Felt scrape under front passenger floor and later found scrapes on right frame rail. Took to Lexus in PA and checked out suspension and I think wheels and no damage found.
No Vibration detected

11/2022; 31K Miles; Installed 4 new Pirelli P7 AS Plus 3 215/55/17 94V; 4 wheel alignment (R/F camber bolt required to get into alignment specs)
Vibration Detected ~ 25 mph

12/2022 Shop test drove and confirmed vibration; rebalanced tires; L/F was out 1.5 oz and others out .5 oz
Vibration detected ~25 mph

12/2022 Shop test drove with different tech to get second opinion and confirmed vibration again. They knew I was under a time crunch as I was getting ready to drive the car from PA to FL. They replaced the Pirelli's with 4 new Michelin Defender 2 215/55/17 94H. Obviously balanced again.
Still had vibration.

12/2022 Ride to FL experience vibration at ~25 mph and at ~ 75 mph. (Had not hit highway speeds previously so hadn't experienced the vibration ~75 mph until FL trip)

1/2023 Took to Lexus dealer in FL asked them to especially look for radial AND lateral bends in the wheels. Tech test drove with me and confirmed vibrations at 25 and 75 mph. After road force balance and inspection told me all 4 wheels were ok. 2 of the tires could not be road force matched. attempted to balance all 4 tires and installed the lowest road force on the front (12 & 15) and put the tires on the rear that could not be force balanced (21 and 23). I was advised tires should be under 16 for a sedan. After tech test drive, was better than before but still present. Advised to not rotate tires or try to get two new tires as they were bad

Sooooooo most of this is not understood by me and I am trying to figure out if I had incredible bad luck to get 2 new sets of tires that were bad or if someone missed a bent rim (would a road force balance definitively find a bent rim??? either radial apparently more easily detected or a lateral bend which I understand is much more difficult to detect and should not be repaired but replaced) or are they missing something else??? At my wit's end. Perhaps I missed the vibration after the pot hole or running over the cement median but I don't think so.

Sorry for the long post but wasn't sure what was relevant and wanted to lay out all the facts as I know them.

THANKS for any input.

 

Likely to be suspension related. Like wheel bearings or CV axel. Also prior incidents weakens these components to wear faster.

 

I have had the suspension checked and the vibration moves from the steering wheel to the seat depending.

 

Just Checked? Or did they make some adjustment? Depending on what?

 

How did they check it and what they actually check? Giving them a visual once over is not checking.

Wheel shimmy can be caused by Tires, Wheels, Alignment, Suspension Arm, Shock Absorber, Lower Ball Joint, Hub Bearing, or Steering Gear.

E.g. To check Hub Bearing, they need to check for a maximum looseness of less than 0.05mm.

 

It’s prob the tires again and/or shop balancing it. I had a set of continental truecontacts thst always had a shimmy at 70 mph no matter what even after balancing it moving positions on the car. I lived with that for 50k miles and changed them out before the full 70k miles. As soon as I switched to a new shop and new tires from a different brand, my car feels extremely smooth.

I did too hit a curb and thought I had a bent wheel right before I had the initial tires installed so I thought it was that too or suspension, but it wasn’t.

 

You have defective tires. Take it back to where you got them, explain the problem and what you attempted to resolve it then ask for replacement tires under warranty.
I had this issue with new Yokohama tires years ago on my old 2008 ES and Tire Rack accepted them back after the tire store that installed them explained the problems. I got Michelins instead.

They would catch a bent wheel during the tire balancing. A simple bend can be repaired by a local wheel repair shop.

 

I’ve had the same issue on my 2017. 42k miles now. No vibrations on highway before new tires. 3 new sets of Michelins from discount tire. 3 visits to the Lexus dealer and no abnormalities found with the car. They can t reproduce the vibration. Only happens on smooth highways at speeds 70-80. Pirellis Cinturato s now, it’s better but not 100% like before.

 

So frustrating. Took it to a Tire Kingdom to start a warranty claim with Michelin and they had two techs drive it and could "barely" feel anything. One tech's comment was "this car is so quiet" but he did feel something although he thought he felt it in the RF where the camber kit had been installed (emphasized to him the two tires that would not force balance where on the rear of the car) but did a full inspection of the suspension and thought everything was ok. Couldn't find any bends in the rims. He suggested that new tires would not necessarily fix the vibration. I have elected to wait until I get home and deal with the shop where I got the tires. Still find it hard to believe I could get a bad set of Michelins after a bad set of Pirelli's.

 

then maybe the car has a bent frame. Take it in to check the frame out, otherwise try and find another store to take it to to try and rebalance the tires if that doesn’t work. Otherwise I would take it to a specialty rim shop and have them check out the rims. Also try and do an alignment to see if that will help with anything for the car.

 

As I said above, you're discounting problem areas without proper inspection.

 

There's no frame. It's a unibody design.

 

I keep going back to either the tires or wheels because the vibration SEEMS to move when the tires are moved. (Lexus said vibration got "better" after moving the two wheels that would not force balance to the back) Going to have rim repair guy look at the wheels when I get back home and then work on getting two new tires if that is not the issue.