Wheel Wobble And Esp/pollution Warning

[Guest La Durande]

HI, Have just returned from a nail biting trip to France due to wheel wobble.

Had new front discs and brake pads and new tyres on front balanced (assured by garage that a DTI check was made on the discs to check for wobble)

On reaching 100kph wobble started. Tried to drive through it and it actuacted the ESP which immediatly caused a pollution fault thus cutting engine management to "get you home" setting.

 

Had to find an Aire on the toll roads and dis. battery, go through security (engine immobiliser etc) and get back on road.

Went to Citron garage who diagnosed as the anti pollution fault and nothing to do with the ESP.

 

Had tyres re balanced a little better but same trouble with ESP after running for 5 mins with wheel wobble so back to 50mph.

 

Had 2 weeks holiday running around France at 97kph.

 

Have come to the conclusion that the wobble is so bad that the ESP ASR can't cope and sends signal to CPU. The only way that the computer can put car in "get you home" mode (which it wants to do due to the balance of the car being outside of ESP/ASR parameters is to create a pollution fault.

 

Therefore I have the idea that all the reports of pollution problems when due to wheel wobble at 60 to 70mph are in fact ESP/ASR generated and not real pollution faults.

 

Await comments

[paul.h]

Have you had the rear wheels balanced and did the problems start after or before the front discs and tyres were replaced ? Disc problems are only likely to be bad when applying the brakes.

[Randombloke]

Await comments

 

Wobble could be driveshafts, especially if it goes away as you speed up beyond 70.

 

Had a similar issue with a BX.

[Johndouglas]

Had new front discs and brake pads and new tyres on front balanced

 

I would get the wheels and new front tyres rebalanced. I don't think that new discs and pads would cause wobble when accelerating.

[Randombloke]

I would get the wheels and new front tyres rebalanced. I don't think that new discs and pads would cause wobble when accelorating.

 

I would endorse this advice as I have had problems with my C5 being very fussy about wheel balance. It's a low/no cost option. Usually the place that did the tyres will rebalance them once for nothing.

 

Point out that the C5 is VERY fussy about wheel balance.

 

In my case after the rebalance and a small improvement the front/rear wheels were swapped (the rears were only 2 months older than the new fronts) and the problem went away.

 

Worth trying before anything else.

[mike 38]

The wheels on a C5 (2001 - 2003) are centreless and require an adapter plate to fit the wheels to and then on the shaft of the wheel balancer. You have to go to a good quality tyre shop and the person really must know what he is doing. The balancer has a tolerance of 5.0 grm, this is no good for the C5 as its got to be 0.00grm. I can assure you that this will stop the vibration if you have all four wheels balanced, I had mine done three times and thought there was a fault on the car, using high quality equipment to balance all four wheels cured it. Good luck

[techbod]

wheels being out of balance would cause the ESP ( electronic stability programme ) to throw a fault and shake everything so probably showing bogus codes, good tyre fitters should have that converter tool for center-less wheels