Tow vehicle vibration and Tirerack.com?

My truck shakes/vibrates violently at 70 mph. Below 70 and above 80 there is no vibration. I have had the tires/wheels balanced and rotated. In the last 6 months I have replaced wheel bearings, upper and lower control arms, pitman arm, idler arm, shocks, rotors/drums, and last week I had the U-joints inspected and they are fine. The tires were on the truck when I bought it 6 months ago (it’s a 1995 dodge ram). The tread is good, but I'm thinking that the tires may be bad anyway. I'm just on the fence about spending $400 on new tires and still not fixing the problem. Any insight or opinions would be appreciated.

Has anyone bought tires from tirerack.com? Tirerack is about $100 cheaper than buying at a local tire center. You can have tires from tirerack sent to an approved installer and then you pay the installer to install them for you. I'm just a little leery of showing up to the installer and them saying they never received the tires, etc.

I bought from them, everything was great but I had them sent to my house. However, I wouldn't worry about some approved tire center trying to steal the tires. There is way to much of a paper trail to follow right to them and them signing for the load. You'll be fine.

I buy almost all of my tires from them. They are a great company to deal with. I do suggest you call them to order rather than just clicking on the internet. Their salespeople are very knowledgeable, and you may get a better tire (a choice you may not think of by reading their website reviews) for your vehicle by talking directly to them.

I also have them ship to my house, and I get the tires installed at a race shop or at Discount Tire (they will price match Tire Rack as well). I suggest you go to a installer who knows your vehicle well to get the tires installed. I had a Tire Rack Goodyear dealer install for me once. They screwed up the wheel and the TPMS. After apologies and a new components 3 weeks later I was finally satisfied. I now go to the locally known installers who can handle my race tires and my street tires.

Nauty - I suggest for your truck to have the tires installed by the Discount Tire in Flower Mound. The shop on I-35 isn't quite as well known for a good install.


(Message edited by flackpack on July 02, 2009)

(Message edited by flackpack on July 02, 2009)

Just had 8 tires delivered from Tirerack yesterday. Nothing but good things to say about them. Best prices, super fast delivery, fantastic customer service.

Sounds like you got a slight case of what they call "death wobble" which apperently is pretty common on your truck.
Was actually reading about this last night. Seems there are several causes for the wobble or vibration. First case I read about was tire type causing the vibration. Also read steering linkage could be the cause.
Another thing that has made my trucks vibrate in the past has been the rear driveline. Check out the U-Joints in the driveline. That could be your problem. But I'm guessing it's your tires. I'd go down to Discount and pic up a set of BFG All Terrians.

Also was going to ask if your truck was lifted?
The increased driveline angle from the lift could be making your truck vibrate at high speeds

The truck isn't lifted. I had a merchanic I trust check out the U-joints and and he said they were solid. While there I had him replace the pitman arm and idler arm. The truck has 2 new control arms and all the ball joints have been replaced. The vibration has been there since I bought the truck, but has definitely gotten progressively worse. However, with each suspension component that I've replaced the suspension has gotten tighter as expected, so perhaps this is why the vibration seems more noticeable?

I went ahead and ordered some new tires from Tirerack, so we'll see if that does the trick. If it doesn't I'm out of ideas.

I ordered some from them and had them shipped direct to me. I found a local tire shop that charged me less to install than the "approved" installer..
Super fast shipping and saved me a ton..

You should drop your rear drive line and check your U Joints mine looked good and there was no movement then when I dropped my drive line the U joints were jacked they fell apart and I put a new set on and its all better

I would also have the drive shaft balanced, I have a similar vibration in my motorhome between 60 and 68 MPH, thought it was a off balance tire/wheel. With in the hour my driveline flew out the back drilled a hole though my boat. Missed the boat but tore a hole in the trailor tube like a can opener.

You should be able to get the driveline balanced for under $75.

Keep us updated. Seems like these are pretty common problems and we might benefit from hearing your experiences.

I just had a problem with the rear drive line on my Avalanche. It would vibrate like crazy at highway speeds. It looked fine, no leaking, seemed solid. But when we pulled the driveline out, one side of the u-joint was frozen solid. It would definitely be worth it to pull the driveline & check it out closer.

Tires can get a belt shift which means the belt is no longer straight around the tire. At very slow speeds this sometimes give the car a wiggle side to side that you can just feel. Usually the tread is well worn by the time a belt shifts but it can happen anytime in the tires life. At 70 would be about where it would feel severe.
If you rotate the tires front to rear you would feel a difference in the vibration if that is the cause. The fix is replace the tire.

I wouldn't worry about the tires shipping to a shop. I did it once and no knock to them but the installed price made it more then discount tire/Sam's Club/Costco total price so the initial savings might not really be there. That and if you go with one of the other 3 I mentioned the free flat/rotation/balancing is much easier to do because you have a lot more stores in the area.

I actually came out quite ahead of the local places. The Goodyear tires I got from Tirerack were $68 each on sale, $318 shipped to my door for 4 of them. It will cost me another $70 for installation. So basically $400 installed. The cheapest I could find out of NTB, Discount Tire, Sears, and Wal-Mart was $584 installed at Discount Tire.

Heck, Sears and NTB wanted $122 each for the same tire plus installation and tax.

I would have just printed out the tire rack price and taken it to discount tires. They will price match anyone. I worked at discount tires while going through college and i was constantly amazed at how much people could barter with them. Also don't get the road hazard warranty. by the time you pay for the waranty on all 4 tires plus the install and the new warranty if you ever have to use it. you would have payed the same amount as just buying a new tire.

I always joke with friends about trying to get the road hazard on just 1 tire, that way if anything happens to any of your tires you could just tell them it was the tire with the waranty that had the problem.

Reminds me of a Chevy pickup my Dad bought a few years ago. It vibrated horribly so he took it back to the dealer and they rebalanced the tires...no change. They re-alligned...no change. They put a new set of tires (same brand)...no change. He finally took it back one last time and told the dealer he was not going to keep a truck that he couldn't roll the window down on. The dealer asked what he meant. He said that he was scared to roll down his window because the truck shook so bad....thought it might chunk him out! lol They put a different brand of tire on and fixed his problem. Apparently had a bad batch from the factory.

if anyone is going to goto tirerack.com please go through my webportal. tirerack.com is one of our partner stores, and you will get rewarded for shopping through us, if you just goto tirerack.com you get no reward. take 2 seconds and register as a preferred customer (its free) and make sure you are logged in when you do your online shopping through there.

p.s. we have about 3000 partner stores! 4 times the size of AMAZON.com now you can get rewarded for everything you do online!!

kal

www.marketamerica.com/kaldude

tirerack.com= discount tire.. same company.

Talk about fast shipping..... I ordered them yesterday afternoon and paid for regular ground shipping. They arrived at 9:30 this morning. I'm at the tire shop now waiting for them to be installed.

I'm thinking my vibration issue very well may be the tires. The guy here at Discount tires told me the tires on my truck were so old he couldn't remember the last time he saw them. We'll see......

Problem solved! New tires = no more vibration!