Ok, I am living a nightmare right now and I'm about to lose it. When I bought my 420 SEL, it had some Michelins on it that were fairly worn and had no traction in the rain. I decided to research some new tires. After reading many reviews on Tire Rack, I decided to go with the Bridgestone Turanza LS-H, as it consistently got great reviews and ratings. While I have been very happy with the tires around town and in the rain, I can't seem to get rid of the slight vibration in the steering wheel around 80-85mph. I've had the tires rotated and rebalanced several times (about 7000 miles on them), and just today I took the car to a shop that is supposed to be one of the best in Atlanta for this sort of thing. They balance the tires on the car, and I'm told that this is the most accurate way to balance tires.

So, after spending more money rebalancing, the vibration was still there today. I took it back to the shop and they told me that the brake calipers are causing the front tires to 'spin down' too quickly and thus they are not able to get a good balance on the front tires. I just got a brake job and I'm taking it back on Monday to have them adjust the brakes so that I can take it BACK to this other place AGAIN to get the tires balanced before I go on a trip next week.

My question is - does anyone have any experience with these tires, good or bad? Also, does anyone have tires that they are singing praises about for this type of car ('87 420)? The guys at this place today were ******* the Bridgestones pretty bad, but I think it was because they are a Michelin dealer and can't stand that something other than Michelin might actually be a quality tire.

Thanks for any input that you may have.

 

Generally speaking, the Bridgestone tires are okay. This isn't Yugoslavia. Auto tires are a controlled substance in the USA. Yeah, I'm joking, but tires are DOT controlled and Bridgestone isn't going to risk it all to sell tires that belong on Fred Flintstone's car.

If the brake adjustment doesn't fix it (how do you adjust disc brakes?), ask the "best place in Atlanta" to index all the tires to the wheels and then rebalance them. It could be a slightly out-of-round tire. If so, often "indexeing" the tire to the wheel can cure the problem. If a tire is too far out-of-round, the process of indexing will identify it and it should be replaced.

 

There's something you can try if all the tires/wheels are the same size. You can swap the front and rear tires on each side, one side at a time, and take it for a ride after each swap to check if there's a difference in the way the car shakes. If there's a difference then you've isolated the problem to the tire/wheel combo and eliminated the brakes.

 

Thanks for the input. I ran across a couple of posts regarding indexing. I'm going to ask them to do that when I take it back. The brake adjustment wasn't intended to fix the actual imbalance, only to let the front wheels spin more freely so that they can spin them up to a high speed and then let the wheels coast down naturally (right now the wheels are slowing down too quickly, even without the brakes being applied). I had never seen this process being done until yesterday, but literally there is someone in the car while the wheels spin down checking for shakes. The person in the car tells the person balancing the wheel what they are feeling and they adjust it and do the process over again until it is smooth.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the guys at this shop are just going to blame it on Bridgestone and not take the time to isolate the problem. I'm thinking it *might* be a bad motor mount. I've had this problem on other cars in the past. I'm going to ask the place that did the brakes to look for that as well.

Thanks again for the input!

 

It's your decision, of course. If it were me, I wouldn't mess with my brakes to accomodate a tire balancing machine. Correcting improperly installed brakes is one thing, but it sounds like something else to me. Why not ask them to balance the wheels off of the car?

 

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it was not tire related....I have vibes around the same speed, and Im guessing the bushings in the tie rod end are worn. [:@]

 

FINALLY I know what is going on. I have (at least) 2 bent wheels! After all of the drama and countless dollars spent, I now need to replace the wheels. Believe it or not, I'm relieved. At least I know what is wrong and what to do to fix the problem.

Speaking of which, I'll probably post a new thread about this, but does anyone reading know which wheels are interchangeable with an '87 420 SEL? I have seen some later model wheels on these cars in the past. I have fairly new tires, so I want to keep them, but I might be up for changing the wheels to a different look.

Thoughts?

 

So, who bent your wheels? The tire changers? They weren't bent when you bought the car, right? You didn't slide around a corner and slam into a curb, did you?

 

They were bent when I bought the car. I had new tires installed right after I bought it, and noticed that the wheels didn't seem to be balanced. Since I hardly ever drive it on the highway, it didn't become an issue. Now it is.

BTW, it felt like you were looking into my soul when you asked if I had bent them sliding around a corner and slamming into a curb. I did that to my first car and tore it up pretty good. [sm=sigh.gif]