XC90 Vibration and other problems

Ive had a new XC90 T6 for about a year now and have had a few problems and I'm interested in hearing if anyone has had the same problems and if theyve been cured.

For the first 10 months the car pulled to the nearside - I see I'm not the only one with this problem as there is another thread on the topic. My dealer firat told me they all do that and theres nothing to do about it. The service manager was replaced a couple of months ago and on the last occasion the problem was rectified.

The tyres wear out on the outside considerably more than the inside. One of them has 5mm of tread on the inside and 2mm on the outside. That seems excessive to me. The car has done 16,000 miles and we did have a small accident when someoen ran into the forn offside wheel resulting in new suspension and a new wheel/tyre.

There is a vibration through the steering wheel - at all speeds there is a low frequency vibration. At about 60-70mph the steering wheel vibrates as if the wheels arent balanced. The problem has been blamed on mud on the wheels and cleaning them does reuce the vibration a bit but doesnt solve it. The wheels have been balanced about 5 times and it still vibrates.

Any help would be appreciated .

Mark

[Peter Milnes]

The rear wheels are most likely not in balance. This is a "normal" wheel balance problem and whoever does your balancing needs to learn a bit more about wheel balancing. 30-odd years ago I won a "bet" with a garage mechanic who said that there was no need to balance rear wheels for a high-speed (60-70 mph) steering shimmy. When he tried to balance the rear wheels at my insistance he found that one of the wheels had a quite severe distortion on the inner edge of the rim. Putting the balanced spare wheel on sorted the shimmy completely.

Generally steering wobble at low speeds (35-50 mph) is caused by the front wheels and at 60-80 mph is caused by the rear wheels. This crap about mud causing imbalance is definitely a "no-no". The vibration is probably caused by the new suspension not being correctly aligned and/or a distorted rim/tyre.

All the best, Peter.

HI Peter

Thanks for your answer. My Volvo dealer assures me they have balanced all the wheels. In fact the wheels have all bee swapped around a couple of times and still the vibration persists. Could it be caused by the uneven tyre wear? I also drove a new XC90 T6 yesterday with just 700 miles on the clock and that had the low frequency vibration - which actually feels more like feedback from a bumpy road than a real vibration. It didnt have the high speed vibration though.

Mark

[KeatV70D5SE]

Get your wheels balanced by a specialist tyre place. In fact, I'd call my dealer's bluff. Tell them that if they're confident the wheels are balanced that you'll take them to a specialist tyre fitter and have them put on their machine "as is" and if they're not balanced you'll charge them for the balancing...

A decent dealer should be confident enough to take up that challenge.