Took my 64 out for a ride the other day and for the first time in months got the car up to 65mph. At about that speed I noticed a front end hop...feels like a wheel badly out of balance. However, I just had new valve stems put in all 4 and rebalanced. The reason for the new valve stems were because of faulty ones. I found the car twice with completely flat tires due to cheap/cracked valve stems... So thoughts? Bad tire? Something loose in the frontend? At slower speeds the car drives just fine.
Car has all new shocks, tie rods, control arm bushings, ball joints, springs. Ok I have the tires rebalanced like mentioned here first and go from there
Radials...car gets driven almost daily in the nice months. Car had been sitting for about a week prior to this drive
did a weight come off a drum? on my car i loosened the wheel bearing with tire off the ground. the wheel would turn, then rock, then stop, the bottom of the tire was the heavy end i put a weight at the top, turned the wheel and let go. i then added weights till the wheel wouldn't revolve on it's own. sounds crazy? it works. basically balancing the wheel, hub and drum together
If the tire shop you go to still has an on the car spin balancer they can spin the front tires up and see real quickly if one is out of balance. Other things that may be the cause are: loosing a wheel weight an if it drove ok earlier and you didn't change anything that is my guess. Broken belt in one of the tires. Jack the car up and rotate the tire while looking for a lump. That usually shows up at low speeds though. Tread separation. Hubcap that is out of balance. I saw that on some early 70s Ford big cars straight from the factory.
found tires flat,hmmmm,,, could it be the belts in the tires are now shifted after driving it after balancing,, it hapened to me before,, have the balance er-checked, but this time ,take it someplace that does the on-the car balance,,, that way you balance everything that rotates
Did they take a lot of weights to re-balance? More than before? Have them deflate the tires and re-clock them on the wheels. If you can see any small wave in the sidewall, make sure it is opposite the valve stem, then rebalance. As said above, balance on the car if possible.
I will personally never own another Firestone tire. In late 1977 I bought a new Corvette equipped with Firestone 500 white lettered tires. At approx. 18,000 miles all 4 tires had belts shift. You could actually see the bulges in the treads. The DOT settled with Firestone and forced them to replace only tires manufactured within a certain window of time. Mine fell two months outside that window and Firestone wouldn't honor the settlement. I replaced them with Michelins and swore I would never again own a Firestone tire. Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread.
Out of round tire? Jack the front end off the ground, spin it by hand and look closely from the side. I had the same symptons and that was the problem.
Just curious, Kev. Were you able to have someone shave the tire or was it beyond hope? Some brand new tires are so hopelessly out of round they can't be saved.
I shaved my own and it worked great but you don't want to hear that story. Call some tire shops and find out who does it, you will probably have more luck with a tire shop that does a lot of truck work.
I vote for the tire, too. I've had that happen when they were old, and going completely flat might have been enough to damage one. Jack up the car and rotate the wheel with one hand on the tread. You will be able to feel it if there is a high or low spot.
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