D22 steelies & steering wheel shudder

Hi guys,

I recently acquired a set of steelies with good rubber from a mate whose D22 was written off. Wheels/tyres were not damaged by this incident.

Since fitting them the truck now has really bad steering wheel shuddering (jerking from side-side while driving straight) when travelling at 80kph+.

For starters I've noticed that they do not sit hub-centric.


For now I have ordered a set of 110mm outer 100mm inner hubcentric rings to test out if that changes anything.

I removed a steelie this arvo to investigate things and I noticed that the mating surface on them is dished, which basically means there is very little contact surface between the rim and hub.

See what I mean in these pics?? ;

Inner - you can see where it mates with the hub in two spots


Outer to show the 'dish'


If the hubcentric rings have little/no effect I'll be looking at installing a steering damper also.

Otherwise - does anyone know if any brands of steelies have a FLAT mating surface? I could just buy another pair for the front, as they all look pretty similar.

Cheers!

Have you had the wheel balance checked? Could be missing a weight or 2 from one or both of them... That'd be the first thing to check, I don't think hubcentric rings will make any difference to a vibration....

Yep first thing I did was have them all balanced again.

Did your mate have the same issue with his before it was written off? Have you tried rotating the wheels around in case only one of them is a little bit dodgy....

I've heard the hub centric issue more than a few times now causing vibration. Do these wheels fit your mates car hub centric? I think you're on the right track.

Yeah I asked my mate and he had the vibration but didn't bother fixing it. Another different mate with a D22 just put steelies on too and has the same issue. From what I've researched the centre bore on steelies is all 111mm to allow for hilux hubs and everything else is smaller. Can only find 110 OD 100ID hubcentric rings hope they fit.

Just pulled the trigger on a Rancho steering damper. Fingers crossed that sorts it. I will still try and install these hubcentric spacers too, but they are coming from the states so it will be a bit longer before I can test them.

Fitted Rancho steering damper tonight. Shudder has improved, but not 100% happy yet. It feels like the shuddering gets caused by slight steering at high speeds. Not sure where to go from here. Waiting for hubcentric rings to arrive from USA for now.

What brand of sunnies?
The cheapers ones are usually horrible to balance.
I had cheap ones on my hilux and they never balanced properly, i have kings on my D22 and they are perfect. Exact same tyres too.
32 inch BFG KM2's which are notorious for balance issues.

I have a set of sunnies on my work ute [ genuines ] they have a completely flat mating surface on the inner side for perfect rim to hub mating. maybe these rims you have are cheapies and your going to have balance and vibe issues with them. if the hub centrics don,t help you should toss those rims and get the good ones plus get the rotor disc machined sometime [ in first pic ] hump hump.

I'd keep the tyres and turf the rims, they'll just stuff your front end in the long run. And they're cursed

They are Gecko steelies. Thanks for the info about Sunnys, will look into getting a set of them instead. Hopefully head down to my local tyre shop later today and have a look at a legit Sunny.

What brand are the 'legit' Sunnys? Dynamic?

Hub rings didn't seem to work, they were 110mm OD, Geckos are 111mm CB. Still 0.5mm all round of slop

Just putting this out there - anyone with steelies on their D22 (and no issues as a result) can you please confirm what brand they are and also whether the mating surface to the wheel is FLAT?

Set of Sunraysias at the tyre shop down the road have the same style mating surface. ****ed if I know what to do now, other than get rid of these wheels.

So I found some threads about people having steering box issues. One guy suggested adjusting preload on the box to remove the 'ping pong' effect while driving straight. I gave my adjuster bolt about 3 full turns last night, definitely removed the slop and the steering feels more responsive. However it doesn't feel like it takes any more force to turn the wheel. Going to try adjusting it more this arvo and take the truck for a run on the highway. How could the preload be so far out of adjustment? Is this something that Nissan should have done at one of the initial services?

Preload on the box is wound completely clockwise now. Still yet to test on highway, after about 1 1/2 turns clockwise last night it seemed a little bit better on a brief highway run. Starting to think this steering box is no good.

its not good to over wind the adjustment screw on the steering box unless you feel this is the last option knowing all other steering componants are in perfect working order. i feel those newly fitted steel wheels are the issue as wasn,t all ok before these were fitted ?

jonney said:

its not good to over wind the adjustment screw on the steering box unless you feel this is the last option knowing all other steering componants are in perfect working order. i feel those newly fitted steel wheels are the issue as wasn,t all ok before these were fitted ?

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Yeah. I am trying another set of steelies this week hopefully.

RE the winding of the pre-load on steering box. I'd noticed that my steering had about 40mm of play before the wheels actually turned. That's ****ing terrible, so I kept winding it till I was happy, it has about 10mm max now and the steering doesn't feel much stiffer at all.

Update on this. Steering wheel no longer has any shuddering. Still getting vibration through the truck at speed though. Taking it to a specialist wheel alignment place to check alignment, balancing and primarily run-out on these wheels.

I'm happy to report that thanks to Rick's Wheel Alignment in Albion, Brisbane I have finally sorted out this issue. The steel wheels all roll true. The problem was poor balancing by the previous tyre shops that fitted them originally and then the shop I used to check them. I was with the guy today and the weights were all wrong! There was some uneven wearing on 2 tyres too, so we set the truck up with the 2 even tyres upfront and 2 uneven tyres at the back. Took it for a 20km run on the freeway afterwards today and it is sooooo much better. No vibration through the car anymore. Pretty annoying that a tyre shop that I paid to re-balance the wheels left them all set up wrong.