400fanboy

EDIT: Problem was with a bad batch of tires with exceptionally high RF numbers. Tires were replaced under warranty, the problem is completely fixed now and the car rides properly. See this final post about what happened:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...l#post10955802

Winter came. Was time for new tires since mine were just reaching their 7th birthday with low-ish tread and unsafe to run any longer. Perfect time for new tires.

Went over to Discount Tire since they're around the corner from my house, got a brand new set of 4 Michelin's. They're the best right? Welp, not from Discount Tire. I'm now 2 trips to the Lexus dealership and 4 trips to Discount Tire because they sold me tires with 30 pounds of road force and one of them with 41 pounds of road force. Yes, 41 pounds. On a passenger sedan with small-ish tires, not a giant truck. That actually is the max reading the machine told them before it triggered a safety shutdown (so they tell me). I had Discount Tire give me the Road Force numbers on the tires in a blind-test without me telling them and they confirmed the readings; their machine told them 47 pounds on the highest wheel and in the 30's for the rest.

I'm headed to the Lexus Dealership next week to have them replace the brand-new tires with more brand-new tires because I can't trust Discount Tire to put good rubber on this car anymore. I had a long discussion with both the lead tech and service advisor @ Lexus. They tell me they can guarantee less than 15 pounds per wheel, and want to achieve 10 because of the relatively small mass of the tire. Every trip I took to these places the tires were re-balanced on road force machines and none of the 180 degree tire rotating tricks would improve the situation, both places are at the point of just replacing the tires since nothing else has worked.

I've wasted at least 6 or 7 hours of my time so far on this with probably a couple more coming, so, just a fore-warning to you guys of my continued trials and tribulations of getting my car fully sorted. And to be aware of how important out-of-round tires can be for the ride quality of this, or frankly any car can be.

ps: Bent rims seem impossible because it being at all 4 corners, and the fact that it was a night\day switch from the new tires.

pps: I drive the car regularly so it's not a flat spot either.

spuds

So I understand you are saying the M's are really poorly manufactured tires that are way out of balance? Which model tires are they?

YODAONE

You have stock rims?

Chrome plated?

It would be interesting to learn if imbalance in the bare rims...
When I finish with other projects, am planning to have my bare rims balanced - yes it can be done, just not on a tire balancing machine.

Once bare rims are balanced - if possible via metal removal or permanently fused weights, then buy new tires....

Better tires should require less balancing weights..so if large weights, then present the rim balancing receipt to the tire technician along with your request for another tire.

If using stock rims, Lexus offers rim specific weights for LS400...HOWEVER, while available, oftentimes the dealer does not use them...and if the off brand weights are applied to the tire bead area, they look like crap.

I had a friend purchase tires from Lexus and that was the result.

I noticed the unseemly weights, one affixed precariously, and brought my friends vehicle to the dealer and the service manager couldn't be bothered to even come have a look, so in anticipation of this apathy, presented an image and so then he recommended I talk to parts about OEM wheel weights. Sure dude...the parts guy is going to know the exact tire imbalance beforehand and gonna direct service to use the correct weights when he is not even in service.

The take away here is you have to do your research ahead of time - become informed, then place requirements in writing and have the idiot service manager sign it.

Even this will not avoid problems.

gm52594

If it were me, I would return the vehicle to the original purchase location of the Michelin tires. If they do indeed have excess of 30 lbs of road force, Michelin will replace them. I would not blame Discount Tire for the quality of the Michelin tire they mounted. The quality of the balance may be in question, sure, but I wouldn't say they gave you "bad" Michelin tires, and somewhere else would have "better" ones of the same model if you were to get them replaced under warranty. Did you initially pay for road force balancing or just spin balancing? Either way, the road force numbers are now known and they are out of spec so Michelin and the original installer should handle it.

If you have wheels that run true with very little run-out, it is hard to match-mount the wheel and tire with high road force. Any spot on the wheel you place the tire will give you a fairly similar result. It actually takes a wheel that has some run-out to compensate for a tire with high road force. A perfectly true wheel with a tire that has 30 lbs of road force will have 30 lbs of road force at any location you mount the tire to the wheel.

Having bare wheels balanced is a waste of time and very unnecessary. For one, it needs to be balanced again as an assembly after mounting a tire... and a normal wheel isn't very far off anyway. 0.00 is 0.00 on the tire balancer regardless if the wheel was perfect or off 0.50 oz by itself to begin with. You could even make the total weight more for that tire/wheel assembly in the end. Say the wheel was off 0.75 oz in a spot and you had a tire with a 1.00 oz imbalance 180 degrees from that. Well the assembly is only 0.25 oz off. If the wheel were perfect, you'd have a 1.00 oz imbalance to correct. There is no point in pre-balancing a wheel when you have no idea the tire you're putting on or the exact location of the tire imbalance. This is what the match-mounting function with the tire balancer is made for.

The amount of weight it takes to make an assembly balance 0.00 doesn't matter much so long as it's not excessive when it's balanced. What matters is run-out of the wheel and road force of the tire if you still have a drivability issue. Tire balancing can be an art and it does take a good operator to understand the functions of a road force balancer and how to adequately correct for an imbalance. It takes more than a guy who hammers on some weights in dynamic mode.

30 lbs and above is a lot. Michelin would no doubt take care of you if they were presented with that information. If you could get different tires in the mid to high teens of road force you'd be fine on a 225/60R16 size tire (I'm guessing your size here). Don't let this situation swear you off of Michelin tires. I have found them to be much better than most for a very high quality passenger car tire. *Usually* they ride EXCELLENT and I've had far fewer issues with Michelin's than others.

Source: Technician for years and I've mounted/balanced 100's of tires. I'm a tire nut. I even bought a Snap-On balancer for my house.

YODAONE

Three rotating components: Tires, rims and rotors...

Have had an opportunity to see bare rims and rotors balanced on a different sort of balancing machine.. not something typically found in a repair shop..

Depending on application, whether it be industrial, transportation, aerospace or consumer, rotating parts are balanced on special balancing machines fixtured to the application...could be electric motor rotors, fan blades, engine flywheels, crankshaft, driveshafts, etc.etc.etc.

So as it is now, spin balancing a tire on a rim essentially attempts to balance two imbalanced components together to achieve balance.

The reason I inquired of OP whether OEM rims or chrome plated, is the chrome-plated rims are heavier as a result of chrome plating (on information two pounds!), which if the plating is not uniform, may imbalance a rim... chromed OEM Lexus rims used Heavy steel collared valve stems, vs standard lighter rubber valve stems.
Each valve stem will (or should) balance differently on a garage type "tire balancer".

So, in Chicago, there was once a company called Stewart-Warner who had a division designing and manufacturing balancing machines and I was a supplier of component parts and had an opportunity to learn something about the process.

The engineer commented OEM Automotive rims were not exactly precision balanced.

Then tires produced with light and heavy spot imbalance were mated to rims with imbalance.

So, in the present balancing scheme, imbalanced rims and tires are thrown together, then balanced... seeking balance. Brilliant.

One ssue with this scheme is the distances from centee axis of rotation of tire a and rim are different...so effectiveness of spin balancing may vary depending on balancing RPM.

Have seen heavy weights used to balance auto tires/rims.

My position is if the rims and tires were manufactured correctly in the first place, then balancing should, theoretically prove unnecessary.

Then, brake rotors are a source of imbalance ...especially larger diameter rotors.

When is the last time you heard of brake rotors checked for imbalance or being balanced??

It is unclear whether Toyota OEM brake rotors are individually factory balanced, but if not, I bet they exhibit less imbalance than big box auto parts aftermarket...

Wheel locks are a possible source of imbalance....do your wheel locks weigh the same as your lug nuts?

gm52594

Again, pre-balancing an automotive wheel prior to balancing the total assembly (tire and wheel) is a waste of time. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If you achieve 0.00 on the balancer as an assembly, 0 is 0... it is now balanced based on weight. What matters much more is not the static imbalance of a bare wheel, but the runout that exists in the wheel. That is where match-mounting comes in with a road force balancer.

Yes, rotating assemblies are balanced. You don't balance a driveshaft and then attach a large, inflated, imperfectly molded rubber tire all the way around it and call it good. It would have to be rebalanced and that would negate the previous attempt to make just one part of it balanced. When a drive shaft, flywheel, etc. is balanced, it is done. It is ready to be bolted on and ran.

The bare wheels are not perfectly balanced and they don't need to be. An engineer realized you are going to be attaching an unbalanced component all the way around the OD of the wheel and you need to correct that total assembly at the time. This "scheme" of putting together two unbalanced components does work great... been working great for decades. Computer spin balancers correct for this easily, it was what they were designed to do.

At any rate, no tire/wheel assembly is perfectly balanced. Even if it were, that is only one variable of proper balancing. You can balance a tire/wheel to 0.00000000 and still have a shake. A square wheel balanced perfectly will still not roll smoothly. If you have excessive runout or a tire with very high road force you can induce hop in the assembly at speed and you will get a shake even though it is "perfectly" weight balanced.

YODAONE

A little thinking outside the box here..

Which rotating assembly do you think is More correctly balanced...and remain in balance over a wider range of speed(s)?

1.) Individual components balanced before uniting them as an assembly, and then, if necessary assembly balancing;

or

2.) Taking unbalanced components and assembling them before balancing?

Back to OP's post...the only way to more fully demonstrate the tires are off is to show proof the rims are not the cause of imbalance...and having encountered enough b***s*** artists in the repair industry, must be creative and informed to avoid improper work.

SW17LS

Usually Michelins are really good in terms of road force...

gm52594

If the rotating assembly (tire/wheel) is balanced to 0.00 oz. it is correctly balanced. There is no "more correct" balance for an auto tire. 0 is 0 no matter how you got there and both being equal they will exhibit the same characteristics at speed. There is a reason no auto manufacturer wastes time ensuring a perfect weight balance on a bare wheel. You are going to make it unbalanced with a tire.

A road force balancer (Hunter for example) will prove the wheels are ok/not ok. You remove the weights and take a runout measurement before doing the road force balance. That's how it knows where to match up the best spot of the wheel and tire assembly to achieve the lowest road force.

To the OP, hopefully you can go back to the original installer and they will warranty out the defective tire(s) with new Michelins. Have them road force balance the new set, ensure they are mid teens or under, and prove it out with a test drive.

400fanboy

Holy crap this thread blew up. Thank you everyone for your input, I read all of your comments and will respond to key points here.

In general; the fact that every wheel went from fine to a problem leads me astray from any other hardware problem. Front rotors are new and haven't given me any problems. And if one wheel itself was bent, moving the tires around like we've done would move the problem around. But rotations didn't really help the problem very much at all.

All 6 of the trips I've done were road-force balanced. The first was the initial install, the second was me going back saying "hey I'm still getting shake, can you re-do it please". Then as things progressed I asked for actual numbers and down the rabbit hole I went.


This is exactly why I bought Michelin. Ice-x3 winter tires are currently what's on the car, though only now after I purchased them did I learn there was a new model that's out. And no I don't think this will throw me off of Michelin.

I also bought Michelin because they currently are kinda the best out there. Very high quality standards, and everyone is putting PS4S on their sports cars right now since they're kinda the best summer performance tire out there.

Could this be a reason for why I got a pretty ****ty batch of tires? The residual "leftovers" that could have been the bottom of the barrel stuff as they transition to a new tire SKU?

In your comparison question - does it really matter? 1+1 =2, all that matters is the sum of the whole, not the indivigual components. I think what matters more is that you can line up the imperfections so that they cancel themselves out, and then apply balance weights to get rid of the excess. Clearly though I'm no expert, there is probably some tire expert out there at some OEM who knows if it truly matters.

My rims are original to the car, OEM 16's. They rode fine when I purchased the car a few years ago, I find it highly unusual for them all to suddenly go out of whack. I don't drive the car hard, I try and avoid potholes and big bumps in the road like I'm driving a low sports car with low profile tires that have a serious risk of rim damage. But no, it's running 60 profile tires which offer a huge protection against rim damage. Seems very unusual to me.

gm52594

Were they all above 30 lbs? I know you said you had tires mounted that were 30 lbs. and one was 41 lbs.

If they cannot get the road force numbers lower, you need to escalate to whatever manager they have there, or contact Michelin. They *should* take care of the issue without you talking to Michelin... they are the installer. I know that's not always the case dealing with subpar service, and that's a shame. Michelin also has a 60 day satisfaction guarantee. If all else fails, contact Michelin and explain everything.

Either way, you have the road force numbers, and they're unacceptable. The general limit according to Hunter is 26 lbs.

I don't think Michelin puts out "B" quality tires on purpose or sacrifices quality when running out an old model. Unfortunately you seem to have gotten a defective batch; it happens. Take a look at the date codes on the tires, and possibly request a new set (if you get that far) to not be around the same manufacturing date.

400fanboy

Oh wait, here are the RF numbers. I don't know what machines they are using.

Discount Tire:
LF 24lb
RF 32lb
LR 30lb
RR 47lb

Lexus:
LF 25lb
RF 34lb
LR 29lb
RR 41lb (machine shutdown)


On a 225\60\16 Michelin X-ICE XI3 tire.

They actually weren't all above 30, but 3\4 were and that last one still being rather excessive. There was a small variance between Lexus RF numbers and Discount Tire RF numbers, but they were generally in sync. Btw, side note, I can see visible vibration in the steering wheel even after all the trips to the shops at 80+mph. And the vibration coming through the seat is felt at 40mph, smooths out a tiny bit at 55, then gets really bad above 80mph. Speed limit in Utah is 80 so this is super ****ty. Some road surfaces are better, but in general, the more bumpy the road the more it hides the vibration. Smooth tarmac is actually the worst because all you feel is the wobble.

The tires were all from the same batch.

Ok thanks a ton GM. I was going to warranty them anyway, no way I'm paying for two sets of tires. I was going to speak with Discount Tire before heading in anyway and arrange the handoff. But I'll have a discussion with them today. Thanks for your knowledge sir, it's greatly appreciated.

gm52594

You might get some pushback on replacing the 24 lb tire, but maybe at this point they'll do the whole set since you've had such an ongoing issue.

I'm extremely critical of tires, and any vibration seen or felt on a smooth blacktop up to 80-90 mph is unacceptable to me. It's either good or it's not. No real middle ground here.

Let us know what they say, I'm curious. Just keep in mind you can always say screw it and tell them to take them back with Michelin's warranty.

400fanboy

Hold up, what the is going on here.

Why do two of my tires not have the date it was produced stamped into the rubber?

EDIT: nevermind, they are directional tires; it's stamped on the inside of the tire.

Stroock639

are those still available? i'd love to buy a set of OEM wheel weights, do you know any part #s?

i see 90942-03146 is one of many weights but can these be bought as a complete set?