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Tips
Tips

front end wobble / spare wheel

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A wobble or vibration that can be pinned down to an exact speed, coming in and out, will be tire balance, or a bent wheel 99% of the time.

Don't tear anything else apart until you confirm the balance is good and the wheel isn't bent. And you will want to have it spun, so you can see just how much run out there is at 40-50MPH. Most shops will let you look closely, if you explain your problem and ask the owner or managers permission to see what is wrong as it spins.
 
Tom,
The standard TR wheels do seem to be susceptible to bending. I have had four bent wheels on the three TRs I've owned. Don't just look for a bend in the outer rim. The inner side of the wheel can also bend if you hit a pot hole hard. I had a real problem on my TR4A years ago with wheel wobble. After fitting new tyres, balancing, changing wheels, etc I discovered that the rim on a rear wheel was splayed apart slightly allowing the tyre to compress into the wheel on each revolution. This was not apparent when the wheel was raised off the ground and I only noticed it by hanging over the side of the car while the car was slowly rolling along a slight incline.
Having replaced two bent wheels on my current TR I notice that one front wheel still has a lot of weights on it. I suspect that there is a problem there, even though it appears to spin true.
If you are checking for play in the steering, have someone hold one wheel while you play around with the other. You may find that the two wheels move slightly independently of each other. Then look for the play between them.
 
I once bought a set of tires and as is my practice dropped the rims off and picked them up later. Got ready to repaint the rims and discovered that on the ride home the weight had falled off of one of the rims.

Then I discovered that on another 2 of the tires they had not removed the old weights before balancing (extra lead no charge).

The 4th tire looked fine... until I rolled it and could hear the bottom end of the old valve rattling around inside.

I had never realized how many ways there were to mount a tire incorrectly.

Moral -- I wouldn't assume they got a tire balanced right. If you have made a good effort to eliminate other factors they should be willing to rebalance it. BTW - I would think a bent rim would be very obvious when they are balancing.
 
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