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For six months I have been chasing a reasonably bad vibration in the steering wheel of my 997 GT3 RS. We first eliminated all the obvious things like wheels out of balance, geometry, etc before we ended up replacing the steering rack, the front bearings, getting new tires, new front wheels (not cheap!!), checking the shocks and the suspension towers, etc, etc. We tried everything.
But frustratingly, after each fix and thousands of euro, it was still there. In the end we were collectively scratching our head as what was causing it. Until, a friend of mine recalled having a car some time ago with similarly bad vibration where he would balance the wheels (which eliminated the vibration) only to find it return after a few kilometres of driving. Turns out the tires were moving on the front rims after hard braking and on the rear rims after hard acceleration.
So we put two small white dots on each wheels. One on the rim and one on the tire and then went for a 20km drive and, sure enough, when we got back, the two dots had moved out of alignment by 1cm. We could not believe it so just to be sure, we put another white dot on the tire and we went for another 40km drive. And bingo, the tire had moved another 1cm. So overall, the tire had moved 2 cms on each rim after only 70kms driving.
We contacted Michelin and Porsche (and sent photos) to ask if they had ever come across this before and both said no. So we decided to lightly sand the inside edge of each rim and apply a tire glue....and lo and behold.....no vibration. Steering back to what it should be on a 997 GT3 RS.
I am so glad we found it but what a costly and frustrating exercise it turned out to be tracking this problem down.
The shop uses to much soap in the tire installation. Have them dilute it down a bit. Also looks like the wheels have ben painted. Hopefully they didn't paint the in side edge.
The shop uses to much soap in the tire installation. Have them dilute it down a bit. Also looks like the wheels have ben painted. Hopefully they didn't paint the in side edge.
glad you to it all worked out.
The wheels were brand new OEM wheels from PAG. Not repainted wheels.
Also, what I didn’t mention is that in co-operation with Michelin we tried 3 sets of tyres thinking it was a production problem with the tires.
What hat we have since discovered is another 997 GT3 RS owner with the same problem. It seems that a selected number of OEM wheels have too much paint applied to the inside of the wheel causing the tire to slip on the rim. At least that’s the theory at the moment.
I chalked the tires right over the valve stems during an auto-x event, my rears slid about an inch in the direction of the car accelerating but my fronts remained planted. The tires are new, I am guessing they will settle and stop doing this and I will re-balance them soon.
08-22-2018, 07:00 PM
Bad vibration in Steering wheel
