crystallinity

I have the ZR1 replicas as well. Did you get them from FSS?

1968swbbigblock

1 - the shop that installed the wheels should have checked them for both to make sure they where true and square. This allows you to return the wheel before the tire is mounted. Most dealers will tell you to stick it after a tire is mounted. 90% true would not cut it in my book. They make dial indicators for a reason.
2 - Yes the tinnerman nuts should be removed
3 - Road force balance can not fix all wheel and tire issues - I have also found many that do not know how to use a road force machine correctly.
4 - you are correct highly unlikely that it is an alignment issue.
5 - I trust that you have your old wheels and tires? If so mount one at a time until you find (hopefully) the one bad tire/wheel combination.
6 - It could be a bad tire in the mix as well (assuming you bought new tires). Have the tech check the tire to make sure it is round and true.

jost6453

i agree completely. I've had several sets of A/M wheels and after having s few vibration issues i have learned to check them with a dial indicator before mounting tires. I've found s few bad ones and sent them back. If runout is good, mount the tires, check that tires on rim are round, get a good balance and you should be good to go. Another contributor to vibration can be brake rotors, but since you didn't change yours I doubt that is your problem.

MarkB3

My '05 coupe had a chronic vibration in the front left OEM wheel. No amount of regular balancing fixed it. I finally tried Hunter Road Force balancing and bingo - problem found. Wheel was very slightly bent. I used a Mercedes shop in Scarborough, Maine which was the only road force balancer anywhere near me. The shop had a wheel repair shop on call that would bring all his equipment to the Mercedes shop and repair an alloy wheel on site for $100. That cured my vibration, two years in a row. It seemed to me the OEM gumby wheels bent pretty easy and Maine roads really really suck.

crystallinity

Update:

Took it to a place that had a road force balancing machine. The front was off by .25 and .5, the rear .5 and one was fine. I had them done 3 times at the dealer, and they were still off... They didn't have to do any of the actual moving of the tire, so they didn't charge me for the road force balancing, just regular. I saw that the tinnerman nuts were in fact on the studs as well. Smooth as butter now!

I'm surprised how insistent the techs at the dealer were that the wheels were bad, telling me I won't resolve this without swapping back on my OEM wheels. I'm also surprised that the corvette tech didn't check for those tinnerman nuts on the studs as well.


Thank you so much for everyone's input here, this was driving me absolutely insane -especially because I'm in love with the wheels and didn't want to have to put the OEM ones back on. You guys are awesome <3

crystallinity

MarkB3

Seems to me that much of what a corvette owner learns on this forum is self-defense information.

You arm yourself with information to protect yourself from the morons at GM dealerships. Think where you'd be if you actually listened to those people.

vcheng

The quality of the balancing achieved is more dependent on the tech than the machine, since the biggest source of error is properly mounting the wheel to the machine for balancing. Always.

Sledge Hammer

I just read your post today and I am glad to see you got your answer. The Tinnerman nuts have caused many of us to scratch our heads. When looking at them It doesn't seem like they should have much of an effect, but they sure do. You would think tire techs would know this issue by now, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I experienced this the first time on my C5 and then again on the current C6. Stop back and educate the "Corvette Tech"