Why tires wobble

Wobbling wheels are most commonly caused by unbalanced wheels or suspension issues. Your car must be sent to a workshop to be fixed, pronto. Here are several other reasons that can cause this to occur.

These kerbs may look innocuous, but hit them hard enough and you could cause your suspension to become misaligned. Mounting or striking a kerb can cause serious damage to your wheels and suspension, especially if you hit it hard enough. In Singapore, kerbs are between mm and mm tall, of which 25mm to 50mm is vertical and the rest angled towards the pavement at about 70 degrees. At higher speeds, more damage can be sustained.

Misaligned wheels can cause tire wobbles—especially in front tires. Sometimes wheels slowly move out of alignment with use. But sometimes, an event, such as slipping into a curb on an icy road, may immediately knock your alignment out of whack. Pay special attention to sudden alignment change. Otherwise, an alignment wobble will tend to present itself slowly and gradually instead of radically and unexpectedly. Alignment problems will cause irregular tire wear, increasing wobbles.

When you first have your tires installed, the installer uses lead tire weights to balance them. Although a reputable wheel and tire shop should inspect your vehicle, as soon as possible, it is not a significant safety issue.

You should be able to drive your car to a wheel and tire shop safely. If the wheel is not bent, then the wheel is most likely just out of balance. The wheel shop will run the wheel through a balancer, and the wobble should be eliminated. If the wheels are perfectly circular and balanced, and your vehicle still wobbles, then you should have a mechanic look at the car.

All brand names, trademarks, and logos are the property of their respective owners. Any mention or usage of their intellectual property is used solely for identification purposes only. Velospinner is not affiliated with any vehicle manufacturer. View cart. Why Does My Car Wobble? Cupping Wear Cupped tires have random worn-down patches around them.

Wobble At 15 to 20 Miles Per Hour If you feel a considerable amount of wobble at low speeds, we recommend you head immediately to a reputable wheel and tire shop. Wobble at 30 Miles Per Hour or Faster If your vehicle wobbles in this speed range, then the cause is most likely a slightly bent wheel. If this is the type of shake you have, you should have the rotors checked for warping. If they are warped, they can be machined turned to be straight again, but you can only turn them a couple of times before they get too thin, at which time they must be replaced.

Some vehicles can pick up even violent wobbles oscillation at a certain speed, but not every time you drive at that speed. This is usually caused by loose suspension parts or bearings. What happens here is that a loose suspension component can allow the front end to start wobbling, like when you hit a bump, and once the wobbling starts, you have to slow down, or even stop to correct it. Tires are very consistent, they will always do the same thing at the same speed. So if the vehicle only wobbles some of the time, it is usually a loose or worn out suspension component that is to blame.

In this case, you should see your mechanic, or we can look for the cause if you want, but we don't do this type of repair. This type of vibration is usually caused by motor mounts.

If they become worn, vibrations can show up when accelerating hard, or pulling hills. Experienced mechanics can diagnose this easily, and again, this is the realm of the mechanic. There are actually many more types of "non-tire" related shakes, but these are simply some of the most common. Transmissions and drive lines can cause shakes too, but they are not quite as simple to diagnose. As stated earlier, tires are very consistent, they will wobble at the same speed every time, whether, you're driving at a constant speed, braking, or accelerating.

So if you car shakes at the same speed or speeds every time, tires are the first thing to check. The simple test is to run your hand along the face of the tire, and you can feel it. You may want to make sure you don't have steel cords showing on the tire first, so you don't get cut! If the tire is flat, then good, if it has small waves like on the sea, you have cupping. Even though the tire in the picture is worn out, it clearly shows what we mean by cupping.

If you look along the edges of the tire, you can see that one tread block is raised up, and the next one in the row is almost completely smoothed out, then the next raised again. If you can imagine what this would feel like if you ran your hand along it, then you should be able to imagine what this would feel like if it was mounted on your car!

Cupping can be caused by alignment problems, or inherent vehicle design issues. Rear tire misalignment on front wheel drive cars is a textbook cause of cupping. In the middle picture you can clearly see the dished out spots on the left side of the tire, but if you look carefully you can also see a diagonal "valley" in the tire. It goes from the outer flat spot towards the middle of the tire and downward in the picture.

Rear wheel misalignment will always show this diagonal type pattern. If this type of wear shows up on rear of your front wheel drive car, the only way to correct it is to have a four wheel alignment done. You can put new tires on it, but unless you have the rear of the vehicle aligned, it will just be a matter of time before the new tires are cupped also.

On the other hand, all kinds of vehicles, particularly four wheel drives, but even high end European cars, can have inherent design issues that can cause cupping. On many of these vehicles, the only thing you can do is keep the tires rotated, and if possible, choose tires with straight groove type treads.