I've owned my Fabia vRS mk 1 from new since 2005. As the alloys were getting very tatty I decided to have them refurb by a local specialist. I decided on Anthracite colour and when it was finished it looked great with the Black Magic and I thought what an excellent choice. At the same time I got them to fit 2 new Hankook Evos on the front.

 

I took her home, gave her a really good clean inside and out and all was well. I first noticed a problem when I took her on the motorway and above 60 I started to get a noticeable shake in the steering wheel. It felt just like once before when I had new tyres and one of the weights came off. I thought not an issue I took it back to the specialist and they rebalanced it, at this point the guy doing the balancing asked me where I got the new fronts from? I said you sourced them for me, he said "oh just that one of them looks like its been stored wrong and has a kink in it".

 

Anyway he said it should be ok now and so I took her away only to find out it wasn't much better. This week I took it back for the third time and this time they restripped the tyre and rebalanced again after also doing something to the alloy to make it sit better. He said the wheel needed less weights now cos it was running very accurately.

 

Anyway I took it back and for the first few hours it did seeem a lot better so I let them know and thought it was finally ok. Anyway now (a day later) the wobble seems to be back! I took it to a main dealer to see if they would test drive it and the engineer from the dealer says it seems ok to him but I know its not driving like it was......

 

Anyone got any ideas? is it worth trying a different tyre place to take a look ?

 

I'm not sure what to do with it, at the moment I just don't want to drive it as the pulsing/wobbling in the wheel is really cheesing me off.

 

Is it worth switching the rears to the front to see if its something to do with the new tyres? Could the alloys have become damaged by the powder coating process?

 

Cheers

Try swapping the rears over see if anything changes.

put spare on side you think is worse and see if that cures it.

if it does ring tyre supplier and hankook uk and inform them you have an issue with there product.

As these are new they should just swap them

Have they cleaned off all the powdercoat from the alloys where they seat onto hub?

 

This surface should be bare alloy,if its got a coat of powdercoat on it get a flap disk on it and take it off back to bare alloy

Stick on weights don't like sticking to new powdercoat. It may be that you have lost a weight, it's not unknown.

Have they cleaned off all the powdercoat from the alloys where they seat onto hub?

 

This surface should be bare alloy,if its got a coat of powdercoat on it get a flap disk on it and take it off back to bare alloy

 

 This will also help if ever you have to change the wheel yourself. A light coating of grease will prevent the exposed alloy from corrosion during the winter 

Have they cleaned off all the powdercoat from the alloys where they seat onto hub?

 

This surface should be bare alloy,if its got a coat of powdercoat on it get a flap disk on it and take it off back to bare alloy

 

AS ABOVE +1

under load the wheel bolts will crush the powder coating meaning although they were probably torqued up correctly they have come loose

making it shake. only really one way to cure it and thats to get a dremmel style flap wheel in and get it back to the metal so that when you

torque the bolts up they are the correct torque setting and they stay stuck!

 This will also help if ever you have to change the wheel yourself. A light coating of grease will prevent the exposed alloy from corrosion during the winter 

 

I personally wouldnt use grease on the flange bearing surface this can allow over torquing of the bolt thread and lead to fatigue or shear the bolt. Bolt directly onto the metal is the best bet. If you don't over torque they should come off ok. I don't think corrosion / white rust will be bad but upto you.

This sort of issue concerns me, that's why I spoke to Lloyd about this (superhot) wheels and got details of the place he had the work done... Even though it's quite a trek for me I'd rather do that than risk something not being right. Sometimes the extra money can save the stress and time in the long run.

I'm glad that I bumped into this thread, I too have had a second hand set of alloys re-finished for use as winter wheels, and they came back fully painted! Now have never ever seen new "original fit" wheels from any marque supplied with the mating surface painted, so why should it be better to have this when alloy wheel places re-finish them!

 

I will now make sure that I clean that coating off before I use them, one comment I will make though is, at least with Audi as I've read a workshop update from them somewhere, is that Audi advise the use of a grease to be fitted to the mating surface (when using alloys) to avoid seizure onto the hub assembly. 

 

I can't see Skoda's situation being any different - same hub designs and same bolt type fixings, and probably same range of alloy wheel manufacturers, ie Ronal, Speedline, etc - my newly acquired Ronal wheels for my B8 S4 have been made in "Skodaland".