They are hub centric rings and you definitely need them with aftermarket wheels as you may have a vibration without them.

 

Hmm interesting. Mine look like they were designed to be two separate semi circles and not one continuous circle/ring. Would that make any sense?

 

I may not be describing these things correctly???

Here's a pic of the passenger side. I laid the two plastic pieces on there. Not sure how they actually attach? Maybe just a dab of grease?

Here is the drivers side. Only one "half".

I am getting vibrations beyond 60mph. Would these little pieces of plastic make that big of a difference? I'm confused/stumped.




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Understanding how Hub Centric Rings work - JustForWheels.com Check this website out for a better explanation what hub centric do.

 

Thanks, 78ta! Great site.

Well, I went back out to the garage and found the other "half" for the drivers side laying inside the OEM wheel.

Can anyone confirm if the OEM wheels used this 2-piece/half type of ring setup? I can see the outline of where these rings were on the OEM wheel so I believe the rings were OEM, which leads me to believe the tire and wheel shop that installed my aftermarket wheels didn't use any rings, hence, potentially my vibration problem.

Thoughts?

 

The factory svtpp wheels didn't come with hub centric rings. Only aftermarket wheels use these. You might want to order a new set of rings and see if it helps with your vibration problem.

 

Take those off, put your wheels back on and take it for a test ride. I am willing to bet that they are the source of your vibration issues.

 

^^good advice @my monster!

I've never seen those fletch. Usually, the source of vibration is when the factory rotor retainer clips don't get removed prior to installing aftermarket wheels. The clip is on one stud and OEM wheels have a beveled edge to account for this. Aftermarket wheels commonly don't. Looking at your pictures fletch, it appears your clips have been properly removed. I would do what @my monster says and see if your ride improves.

 

Thx for the help guys. I have been having trouble diagnosing a vibration with my aftermarket wheels. So yesterday I swapped out the front wheels and tires with my oem wheels and tires (Michelin as3) that I still have to do a test to see if I still have the vibration. I still had the vibration though it wasn't as bad but still quite noticeable. When I went to swap back to the aftermarket wheels (vossen) and tires (Michelin Pilot super sport) last night I noticed these black plastic things when I took off the oem stuff.

Since it doesn't sound like oem setup used these plastic rings, I guess the shop that installed the aftermarket wheels did, though they sure don't look to be too sturdy or effective.

I'll be heading back to shop to get them to look at the wheels, rings, tires, and front springs to see if any of them are not right so to speak. Only other thing I can think of is my pinion angle may need to be adjusted. I'm currently around -2.1 after lowering and install of bmr relo bracket, with oem lcas in middle hole and oem UCA and bracket. I believe that is within allowable range but perhaps I need to move more toward -3?

Also, would you say alignment might be a culprit? When I'm running down the highway at 75 mph, if I turn the wheel the steering wheel vibration gets worse. I've never experienced that on any car before and the only thing I can think of would be the alignment is not right???


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Fletch, not sure about your pinion angle (I am not lowered) or your alignment (I suspect not), but if you are still thinking it's the new wheels/tires, something to try:

Try to determine if it's in the front or rear. Front should be felt in the steering wheel, rear in the seat. Then, take either both fronts or both rears to the tire shop. Have them deflate your tires and rotate them 180 degrees on the wheels. Remove old weights and rebalance them.

Sometimes the "heavy side" of the rim and the "heavy side" of the tire get lined-up together and even after adding weight to balance, it never is quite-right. Putting the two heavy sides opposite of each other could alleviate the vibration.

Also make sure the rotor retainer clip is removed from all four corners.

 

While goose advice about dismount and remount and turn tire on wheel is good advice and may help your vibration problem but I would do the following. I would try to find a shop that has a road force balancer ( preferably a hunter road force balancer ) The road force balancer will have a roller that puts a load on your wheel and tire assembly and measures wheel and tire run out. The balancer will tell the operator where to turn the tire on the wheel for the best balance as it measures tire and wheel run out. With all this said the main thing that is hard to find is someone that knows how to use this balancer and will take the time to properly check run out and properly balance your wheel and tire assembly.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...eatures/goss_garage/road_force_balancing&usg=AFQjCNF1rgkce-sFwpvHKqOUkJqSW67Z7A Check this site to see what a road force balancer made by hunter looks like.

 

+1 on the road force balancing.

When I hear a vibration gets worse on turning, I think brakes. Specifically a warped rotor. Then toe-in.

Worth checking.

 

Warped rotors -- that would not have occurred to me. I don't get any pulsating whatsoever on braking??




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Fletch... those pics of a spacer look scary to me. My opinion for what its worth is that, I think your wheel should be mated up to the rotor/hub flat and tight. when you torque your lug nuts down there should be no space between the back of rim and surface of rotor.

Having something in-between rim and rotor i.e. a factory spacer from the manufacturer of rim means it is required to fill in the gap created by their rim not mating up to the rotor per car manufacturer specs, or not centering equally.

Anything spongy or not perfectly flat is going to create wobble effect and vibrations not to mention maybe allowing the lug nuts to back off.

even a slight discrepancy at the the center can mean a huge transfer to the outside of wheel.

I dont like the looks of those pieces at all.

 

I completely agree. They are just flat out strange. What's even more weird is that they look to have been used with the oem wheels given that I can see the dirt shadow on the wheel where they "mated" to the hub and the grooves in the plastic that match the grooves in the backside of the oem wheel. If my measurements below are right I don't think they were needed with the oem setup.


I did some measuring -- here are some rough measurements with a tape measure:
2 and 3/4 inches is the inner diameter of the OEM SVTPP front wheel.
2 and 3/4 inches is the diameter of the hub where the wheel would mount.
2 and 13/16 inches is the inner diameter of the Vossen wheel.
Which means there is 1/16 of gap between the inner edge of the Vossen wheel and the hub.

Do you all think this would be enough gap to cause vibration? I'm thinking it might. Would the wheel studs take up any of that slack or would there still be 1/16 inch of wiggle room?




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as may have been already stated by another poster, those do not look to be anything OEM, they look Mickey mouse and I would get to the bottom of it pronto.

If as you say you can see dust build up impressions on the back of your rim indicates to me that there is a void between the rim and rotor, not good. when I remove my OEM rims there is a rust stain on the rim that mirrors the one on the rotor.

I thought that you were running aftermarket rims, but if you are running oem then those pieces of crap are from some one else's rims left there erroneously IMHO.

 

Yep, I am running aftermarket rims. I did a swap with my OEM rims as a test. I know those ran smoothly before lowering and moving to aftermarket rims. When I did the test, the OEM rims didn't run smoothly. It was when I went to swap back to the aftermarket rims that I discovered these black plastic things.

This has been quite the confusing issue to this point.

After taking it all in and thinking about it some, here is what I think may have happened.
-- the shop installed the aftermarket wheels without any rings, and it is the 1/16th inch gap that is causing the vibration
-- when I did my test, I'm guessing I didn't notice the black plastic things still attached to my OEM wheels before installing the wheels, causing the vibrations with them

My next step is to call the Just For Wheels site provided earlier in this thread by 78ta and getting some proper aluminum rings to use with the aftermarket wheels and see if that takes care of the problem.

 

I thought the wheel is centered when the tapered lug nut meets/torques to the taper of the wheel lug nut hole X 5?

A couple of years ago when I upgraded from 14" to 15" front Baers, I took a couple of pictures. I have no black things on my rotor(s) with aftermarket wheels (Alcoa's)........





I have no vibration(s) and no hub centering adds.



R

 

Right Robert, Love that new look! dont you wish they would stay that fresh looking ??? the spacers or shims/ centering devices are up to the aftermarket rim supplier to adapt to differing applications to accomodate fitment.

some situations require nothing while others require bits and pieces to achieve proper results.

 

What I don't understand is the hub centric thing? If the lug nuts are tapered and the lug nut seat in the wheel is tapered, how can anything rubber or plastic on the hub change what the metal to metal taper fit is doing unless the tapers do not seat?

Is it the use of non-tapered lug nuts and corresponding non-tapered wheel holes that require or might need the hub centric?



R

 

Rotors;

Yeah, I have felt a shimmy in the steering wheel before it became pronounced enough to feel in the pedal.

Just a suggestion.

 

10-4! Who knows where this problem solving adventure is going to take me... All options are on the table! :wink:

 

After some more thinking and research, I went back out to the garage yesterday. I decided to take off one of the rear aftermarket wheels and see what was there (or not) re: a hub ring. Here is what I found...a nice, one piece plastic ring that was attached the the car hub.

[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/149991739@N04/]

Upon further examination I found two measurements
70.3 denotes 70.3mm car hub bore size
73.1 denotes 73.1mm aftermarket wheel hub/wheel hole size

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149991739@N04/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149991739@N04/


It's clear now that the two pieces from the front wheel were one ring at one point in time. I found the same numbers on them.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149991739@N04/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149991739@N04/

I ordered two sets of hub rings from the site mentioned earlier in the thread: one aluminum and one plastic for back up. Hopefully, I get them this week so I can continue the problem solving.

 

Why do you need said "hub rings" fletch?

 

Basically, the hole in the aftermarket wheel is slightly larger than the diameter of the hub on the car. The hub ring "fills in the space" so to speak so that the wheel is perfectly centered.

 

Do you not have tapered lug nuts?

 

I do. Here's a pic of the lug nut used on the aftermarket wheels.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149991739@N04/

 

Install the wheels without the rings and take it for a test drive.

 

I'm a little leery of doing that. I don't want to run the risk of damaging the studs by things potentially not being centered up. I'd rather wait to get those rings (especially the aluminum version) to ensure the wheels are perfectly centered up.

Besides, there would be no test drive today or tomorrow anyway. Literally in the midst of a tropical storm Irma in Atlanta at the moment. I'm getting nervous watching the trees outside our home windows dance around like crazy with the wind gusts! :worried::worried::worried: Plus, I need to find a stretch of road with little traffic where I can get it up to 70mph and beyond, which usually means the weekend around here -- too much traffic in and around Atlanta during the week.

 

This thread is making my head hurt and I'm sorry I didn't jump in sooner.

They are plastic hubcentric rings designed to assist in taking up space betwen the hub of the car and the inner bore of the wheel. Tapered lug nuts aren't perfect and this helps align the wheel before the lug nuts get torqued down.

They were installed when the aftermarket wheels went on.

When you took those wheels off the rings probably stuck to the hub and were then smashed when you put the factory wheels back on because the inside of the factory wheels are 70.3 just like the hubs.

This is totally standard procedure for aftermarket wheels designed to fit multiple vehicles as they aren't going to machine the wheels to fit every possible combination of width, offset, and hub bore.



Long story short you need to order two more rings for your wheels. Talk to the tire shop or the wheel manufacturer. You'll have to pay for them as they were destroyed when you didn't remove them at the same time you removed the wheels. I understand you probably didn't know to look for them necessarily, but that's just the way the ball bounces sometimes. If the wheels are still unbalanced then you need to have them re-balanced possible. Butler tire has a great tire balancing machine, but it was broken last I checked.

 

I hear ya, @mavisky ! My head exploded long ago! :grin:

Butler Tire is where I got the wheels and they did the balancing.

If neither the "no ring" option/test nor the "with ring" option doesn't work, then I'll be heading back to Butler to have them diagnose and correct. :rocker:

 

Hi Kris-

Sorry to jump in late here, but one more piece of advice:

With stud piloted wheel systems (the interface of the chamfered nut pilots wheel centering via the same degree chamfer on the wheel) the nuts should do the centering, not the center bore of the wheel (this is called a hub piloted wheel system). This is why nearly every wheel that is stud piloted has a larger center bore than the hub, as they are designed NOT to interface.

But you can get in trouble with either system with improper tightening and torqueing, so:

1) Don't jam the first nut on with an impact gun.
2) Create a triangle with the first 3 nuts
3) hand tighten the first nut at 12:00
4) Move to the 5:00 and 7:00 and hand tighten them
5) Grab a manual socket wrench and move back and forth between 12-5-7 with a half a crank each
6) Install the remaining 2 nuts alternating between like in steps 4/5
7) Grab a calibrated torque wrench and tighten to 100 ft/lbs using a star pattern 12-7-5-10-2-12
8) The torque wrench should move each fastener at least a little before it clicks or breaks

It sounds long, complicated and anal, but it really isn't.

This procedure with give you the best possible chance of making sure it is equally centered and not cocked. If you zing that first nut on hard with German torque (Gutentight) the wheel can stick in one position and not center itself regardless of what you do with the remaining nuts.

Hope you soon get it sorted!

 

Thanks, Chris! I'm definitely anal about my car. :grin: That is the torque method I use as well. :bigthumb:

I honestly don't know if there is a "right" answer in all this but I'll try both methods and see what works. And of course report back here with the results! :bigthumb:

 

Fletchffletch, did you say the hub rings were available in aluminum too?

 

Yes, they are. Looks like there are several places/vendors to buy from. Just for Wheels, Hubcentricrings, Amazon, eBay. Not sure any one vendor's is better than the others.

 

Most all OEM rims are hub centric. This allows the weight of the vehicle to be supported by the hub to the rim. The lugs carry no vertical load or have to absorb any impact. The lugs merely hold the rim in place on the hub. This is a HUGE factor when it comes to load.

When the lugs are supporting the weight of the vehicle you are carrying all of the load and road impact directly through the lugs. The hub is not used at all. This is a significant difference between the two. This also requires the lugs to do the centering of the rim on the hub for proper balanced rotation. As eluded to above, you have to be careful in how you torque the lugs.

To me, the rubber or plastic spacers are comical if they are expected to carry any load. They will distort. If they are supposed to help center the rim while you tighten the rim, then I guess they are better than nothing. The aluminum spacers would be ideal if they are a correct fit to the hub and rim.

Tom

 

Most all OEM rims are hub centric. This allows the weight of the vehicle to be supported by the hub to the rim. The lugs carry no vertical load or have to absorb any impact. The lugs merely hold the rim in place on the hub. This is a HUGE factor when it comes to load.

When the lugs are supporting the weight of the vehicle you are carrying all of the load and road impact directly through the lugs. The hub is not used at all. This is a significant difference between the two. This also requires the lugs to do the centering of the rim on the hub for proper balanced rotation. As eluded to above, you have to be careful in how you torque the lugs.

To me, the rubber or plastic spacers are comical if they are expected to carry any load. They will distort. If they are supposed to help center the rim while you tighten the rim, then I guess they are better than nothing. The aluminum spacers would be ideal if they are a correct fit to the hub and rim.

Tom

I've been noodling on that thought as well. Aluminum hub rings I ordered will be here this afternoon.