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This weekend I greased my wheel bearings and my steering box. My box had some play so I tightened it too (easy to do). After this my car and steering wheel shaked horribly after running over any road imperfection. This baffelled me, this did not happen since I balanced the tires and ' rebuilt ' the suspension two months ago. I checked my suspension for tightness even had my dad shake the car side to side to see if anything was loose, I kept checking and driving around until I gave up around 11 o'clock at night this past Saturday. My dad suggested it was the tires so I rotated them over and over Sunday morning, the car still shook. It was odd that tightening the steering box and the wheel bearings caused this to show up . This is my main car to go to work so I did not give up and so off for new tires I went. I bought 4 new Lemans tires at the local Firestone Tire store to replace my Korean Signet tires, same size 165 R15 (cheapest size). The tire technician said all my old tires were out of round and way out of balanced. He said it was kind of those Laurel and Hardy movies where their Model T Ford tires where so misshapen that one could see the car bob up and down . My tires were not that comical but when I hit a bump on the road the tire would start an ocillated bounce and shake up the car. He asked me what did I do to these tires to make all four out of round, I told him about my fast driving and the speeds I peaked and sustained. He told me that standard tires are designed for peak speeds between 90 and 110 and that speed rated tires started their peaks at 120 to 130. The higher the speed the tire was rated then the price would go up. He said that sustaining the speeds that I was pushing was very dangerous for these ' slow ' tires, even sustaining speeds near the lowest speed rating was placing large centrifugal force that was enough to damage tires that were not new. Out of rounding or big tire explosion could happen in the tires life from this sustained abuse. So this guy was going to scare me into more expensive tires or slower speeds. Since I am on the frugal side I opted for slower sustained speeds around 75 MPH instead of my normal above 85 to peak 95 and ocasional 100 MPH . Got to take it easy when taking my terrified mother to work when she is getting late. She gets in at 5 in the morning so the Freeway is 'clear' for road warroring for an hour of driving for me . No more mad Max for me. I guess I was endangering my Mom's and my life with the speed vs tires. The headlines might have read "MOM AND SON DIES IN 100 MILE AN HOUR ROLLOVER, NEWS AT A 11" . I must correct my evil ways. The Korean Signet tires I had, were warranted for 40,000 miles and I put 50,000 into them so these tires did give me very good service life considering the speed and very bumpy offroad use. They still had some tread except for the out of round part that I more than likely caused by speed. The new Lemans tires feel very smooth, almost silky, I guess because they are not out of round. It has been a long time since the roads were smooth. I guess everything was repaved imediately when I bought my tires. All of the "normal" bumpiness of my ride was blamed on the road and it was more likely that the tires were the cause. I may have had a small level of out of roundness of my tires to cause the road to feel bumpy all last year. I thought this car 's bumpy feel to the road was normal , like in the old Fiat X/19 I used to have. Sublime bumpiness of my tires whent unoticed for a long time maybe one year or more wow ! Everytime I fix something in the suspension some level of bumpiness is corrected, now it is as smooth as silk. My steering stabilizer shock absorber has lots of oil on it, I beleive it is no longer absorbing. If I replace it (which I will anyhow) what will it do for the improvement of drivability ? LEON MARTINEZ 1969 SQUAREBACK EFI/AUTO SAN DIEGO AND TIJUANA ------------------------------------------------------------------- Search old messages on the Web! Visit http://www.vwtype3.org/list/