Rear End Shake

[samhouston]

Hello everyone.

I have never had so much frustration from one small problem.

I will give you a run down of my initial problem and my current situation.

Took my car (FG XR6T ute) to the track to have some fun. Note my ute has 20" G.MAX defiant rims on it.

I got a puncture in one of my rear tyres which were just cheap crappy tyres anyway.

So I decided to replace the rear tyres and swap the wheels to the front of the car, with the front wheels with old tyres going on the back.

I bought a pair of Federal 595 EVO's and had them fitted up, balanced and had the wheels swapped over by my local tyre shop.

A day later my left rear wheel came loose and the car was shaking all over the place. I realised and tightened the nuts, quite annoyed at the tyre shop for obviously not tightening them enough.

The shake however never went away. Mainly noticeable above 80km/h, worse the faster you go.

The following has been done to the car since then;

1. Had 2 studs replaced on rear left which were damaged when the wheel came loose. No better.

2. Had rear wheels balanced. No better

3. Had hub centre ring replaced on rear left. No better

4. Had rear wheels re-balanced. No better

5. Swapped front wheels to the back. No better

6. Took the car to Ford to get drivetrain checked (at a cost of $272 which I will be hitting the tyre shop up for) and all was ok.

7. Swapped 20 inch wheels for standard 18 inch Ford wheels. Problem went away.

8. Had 20 inch wheels re-balanced and fitted back up. Problem re-appeared.

9. Tried spare on rear left and rear right to eliminate either wheel, made no difference.

10. Removed hub centre rings, cleaned face of wheel and hub. No difference

11. Replaced wheel nuts on rear left. Problem went away for 25km or so, then re-appeared.

12. Had hub centre rings re-fitted. No better.

I have sourced another set of Ford wheels which I am going to try a whole heap of combinations to try to eliminate variables.

The tyre shop is trying to wipe their hands of the problem, which I am not happy about. They keep telling me it is a drive train problem.

Basically I have told them I bought a perfectly good, 10,000km old car to them, and a day later it drives like a 500,000km old car.

I have no confidence whatsoever in the car, I am scared something is going to fall off the shake is that bad.

Has anyone ever had a similiar problem and may be able to shed some light. I am frustrated to the point where I am considering going back to standard wheels, even though I love the look of my ute at the moment.

Any help would be extremely appreciated, I am aging by the second with this one.

Cheers,

Sam.

[arronm]

Get a set of std wheels and then substitute each of your 20 inch on the back until you find the problem. Even if a wheel balances up it doesnt mean the tyre is round. And just because tyres are new doesnt mean they are OK. I just put a pair of old tyres off a Late model camira on the rear of my typhoon, they come off the front and are worn on the inside. They balance up perfect but the rear has a bad vibration. The only way I can stop it is to make the rear tyres rotate faster than the front ones. HA HA.

[senna_T]

Check the stud holes in the wheels mate, when the wheel came loose it could've rounded out the holes and this could be causing an unbalance when te wheel moves around.

[samhouston]

I have a set of wheels which I am mucking around with at the moment to try to eliminate the problem wheel.

I will post up how I go.

[samhouston]

Reaplaced the rear wheels. No better at all.

Going to try to source some factory alloys and give them a try.

[Smitty]

Process of elimination. If you changed the wheels and had them balanced and all that then its not the wheels. It sounds like the original wheel coming loose has bent something else. Either recheck the studs or go further in like bearing, uni, axle, etc.

[samhouston]

I thought that too.

I have had Ford alloys on and the problem seemed to go away which I thought was very strange.