I've had my 2008 Hyundai Accent for almost 5 months now, and I'm still having vibration issues at highway speeds (100km/h and up).

I purchased the car with aftermarket rims that Hyundai offered. The rims themselves are made by a company called Fast Wheels that apparently makes exclusive rim styles for Hyundai Canada. I've never heard of them before so I don't know how reputable/experienced they are with rim-building.

The tires on the rims are Yokohama 215/40R17. I don't know a whole lot about tires, but I've seen the Yokohama brand so many times I find it hard to believe that they would have any serious issues with quality control.

And thus the saga begins:

After I bought the car it took me about 3 weeks to realize the vibration issue was present. The first time I took it on the highway, I immediately noticed some serious vibration coming through the steering wheel. I contacted the dealership and they schedule an appointment for me to bring the car and get the tires rebalanced.

It took me a while to notice that the vibration was still present after that first visit because I don't drive on the highway very often.

They sent me to a tire & muffler place that balanced the wheels again. The employee there told me that they didn't know what Hyundai was doing, but one of the wheels was really horrifically balanced. So off I went.

Needless to say, the vibration issue was still there. Hyundai sent my car off to the only tire place in my city that had a 'road force' balancer that could simulate a load while balancing the tires. Apparently that business told Hyundai that one tire wouldn't balance no matter what, so they replaced the Yokohama tire on the front left wheel.

In the mean time, I started university which meant that I was driving on the highway three times a week. The vibration issue was not as bad as before, but still present.

So to recap: vibration now was not too noticeable at 100km/h, but got uncomfortable at 110km/h and downright scary at 120km/h. As much as I like cruising at 100km/h, it's pretty much suicide on some stretches of highway.

I went to the Hyundai dealership for the 4th time for the same issue, and they asked me to bring in the car's original rims to try and see if the vibration was present with those. Unless they were very careful to place them in the back of my car exactly how I had put them in there, they never even tried the car with them on. They told me that they found an issue with the spacers on my tire, and that some of them wouldn't tighten. They're ordering new ones that should arrive in two days, so hopefully that fixes this issue good and for all. If it doesn't, I'm going to take my car into an independent tire & wheel company and see what they say.

TL;DR (aka SUMMARY) because I know that's way too long for anybody to read. It was twice as long before I pruned it. Ranting is therapeutic.

My car has had vibration at highway speeds since I bought it. Four visits to Hyundai and probably a combined waiting time of 9 hours has made me less than happy. They've ordered new spacers for the tires, and if that doesn't fix the issue then I'm going to take the car to a independent tire shop to see what they say.

Has anybody else had an issue like this? I realize that this is a really difficult thing to diagnose since so many things could be causing it. They could have at least narrowed it down by trying the original tires, though.

Holy cow, I really have to stop writing so much.

Im looking at getting 17" rims but im worried about issues like this

I have 18's on mine and they vibrate. Put the centric rings on it and it got rid of most of it

Yea ,
What liquid said!
Hub centric rings will help keep the wheel dead centered on the axle.
I have seen a lot of threads on other forums about this same issue .Most find it fixed by that addition. B)

There are some good write ups on the Elantra forums on the net dealing with this same issue.

This post has been edited by scott9050: Sep 14 2008, 07:55 AM

where do we find Hub centric rings?

a little article you may wanna read, just for more info.
Hub Rings

Thank you. A very informative good read. Now I'm off to find the right rings for our car lol

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

The spacers still haven't arrived. I'll ask the technicians about hubcentric rings when I go in. :)

there goes lepapirriky again with his fancy pdf links...

hehehe fancy but VERY informative pdf link :beer: :grin: :beer:

I have 17'' 205/40 R17 with hub rings. It does not vibrate.

It's a relatively new dealership so I don't think they have too much experience in the tire department.

Anyways, the new spacers solved the problem. From the technician's report, "The spacer rings are oblonged on the hub." I guess that was the issue. I just wish it hadn't taken 6 trips to the dealership to get it fixed. :(

http://www.justforwheels.com/index.jsp?cat...b=how&track=GHR

You can get them cheaper on Ebay, but the application search works well.

This post has been edited by scott9050: Sep 19 2008, 07:55 AM