Vibration from Front Passenger Tire
 

I'm getting a vibration from only the front passenger tire when I reach 60-65 mph. I literally do not feel the same issue above 65 or below 60. In fact the car rides beautifully at those speeds.

I did have the tires balanced and the problem persists. I looked at my struts and the rubber at the underside, before it enters the engine bay, shows some signs of cracking. The control arms bushings looked fine.

Any suggestions? Thanks

What car is this?

Sixto
98 E320s sedan and wagon

Sorry, 88 190e 2.3

have you rotated rim to another wheel? I had one so bad,it turned out rim was bent.

Don't rule out a separating tread or defect in the tire itself. I went through this recently in my Honda and it was due to a TINY tread separation in one of the tires. Balancing/aligning/etc did nothing for it and I got a TON of flak over it from Discount Tire not wanting to honor their warranty. They've lost my business forever over it.

60-65 MPH corresponds to the front suspension natural frequency, and vibration at this speed indicates either a static unbalance condition or out-of round-condition.

The latter can often be detected by spinning the wheel and looking at the tread to see if there is any up and down wiggle. More than about 1/32" could result in a noticeable vibration.

Another analysis is to have the wheel/tire tested on a Hunter GPS9700, which can detect out of round on both wheel and tire.

Your original wheels had "white dots" on the flanges and tires with red dots should be mounted to line up the red dots with the white wheel dots. This results in the lowest out-of-round condition of the assembly, but many tire shops are unaware of this convention even though it's been around for decades.

Duke

i'm impressed that you can attribute it to one side.....most of the time when i have this issue the front vibrates but i can't tell which side is to blame. i've seen some ineffective balancing jobs and a rebalance takes care of it.

Sounds like a Russell Peters skit. “Then just for grins, let’s set the natural frequency at the speed most of these cars will be driven.” I swear, CalTrans steamrollers (they don’t still run on steam, do they?) have a flat spot so the road causes vibrations at 60mph.

Is there a tire plug that’s stiffer than the tire’s tread?

Sixto
98 E320s sedan and wagon

I has a problem similar to this on my C230 and it turned out the wheel bearing had about .002" too much play. You could also detect a little play holding it at 6 and 12. Could be any of the other ideas given of course.

My mechanic friend suggested I swap my front tires. Guess what, no more vibration. Thanks for all the helpful suggestions!

Are you saying you got new tires? Or swapped them how?

So, when you got them rebalanced before, the tire shop either: balanced them wrong a second time, or, didn't notice a significant tire defect?

Actually just swapped the tires. The shop balanced the tires but the same vibration that existed before the balancing continued.

How did you "swap" them? Right to left? Or swap them with different tires? Or front to back?

Right to left. I've got different sized tires on the rear