Quote:
Originally Posted by ergoyo
Well, in an unexpected turn of events, I drove down to the small tire place (Mr Goma's - fairly popular in Miami and on ebay), and explained the wobble issue. At first, their inclination was that it was a shocks issue, but after putting the car on the lift, they confirmed it was not a balancing issue (by hand rotating the wheels and seeing they rolled smooth), but rather, a very bad misalignment. Car was then moved to the alignment bay and when they put the wheel mirrors on, alas, completely off toe and camber in both rears.
To my disappointment I realized my PSPs were down to 3/32nds in approx 1500 miles and 45d of use (had not looked closely until now), from when I bought them at 7/32nds. Wasted $400 right there. So I came to a dilemma, did I hold off on doing a new alignment there or did I wait until next week when the car went in for service at the dealer so I could make them realign under warranty. Since it was on lift already and I was down $20 just for the diagnostic, it was another $40 to complete the alignment so I told them to do it. My thought process was dealer was not going to refund my $175 alignment cost and if they were incompetent the first time, no warranties they would do a better job the second time around.
Driving home (short distance) after that I was not able to feel much of the wobble, but it's still too early to tell since I did not go fast, hit potholes, or drove in wet conditions. I'll continue testing it out through the weekend.
Back to the BMW dealer incompetence: so when they did the $175 alignment about 2 months ago, I remember the dude was scratching his head because for a while he couldn't get it to align correctly. Problem was that with the VIN put into the alignment machine, it was picking up the 19" stock wheel sizes, and that made the computer crazy. He then had to manually override the wheel sizes for the 21" set, and presumably, that got the alignment in place... Whatever happened there, I can probably say it's what started the issue, it was just not done right. The initial readout from today showed the rears in full red and way over toe and camber tolerances (I'm not an expert, so can't comment further). It was all back to green by the time I left. What could've happened at the dealer it's beyond me.
I could complain to the dealer saying they killed my tires, but since those were used tires to begin with, I knew I was not going to get anywhere by giving the dealer a receipt for used tires. It was going to be useless. Now, with 3/32nds on the rears, these will last another 2000 miles (at very best and assuming today's alignment cured the problem), before I either put in new $500 tires each, or another 7-8/32nds pair for about $400. It's just been a bad cash bleed with these 21"s.
Thanks again for your interest in this thread.
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I'm slapping myself right now on the head lol. I misunderstood you when you said "wobbly" - English is my 2nd language. If you mean car was jumpy, especially when you hit pothole and after that rear axle is kinda tossed from side to side (scary feeling when you are driving) like your rear end lost grip - then it's definitely alignment. I'm an idiot not seeing it right away. For some reason word "wobbly" mistakenly got me thinking about vibration you get with bad balancing
Also happens when you have hit curb and there's bent control arm - will be same jumpy feeling of rear axle due to misaligned rear wheels