2013 Legacy - vibration after hitting big rock in the road

[capttris]

Last week, while driving in heavy rain at highway speeds, I hit what looked like a landscaping rock in the road, with the right front tire.  The whole car jumped and it's the hardest thing I've ever hit in over 25 years of driving.

I was expecting to see the TPMS light come on but it didn't.  I stopped and inspected in the dark and didn't see any issues.

I later drove to a Mavis Tire and they found the inside of my right front wheel bent.  I had them repair with a wheel repair guy, and rebalance it.

But I'm still feeling a vibration while driving.  I even swapped the wheel with the rear, and I'm still hearing/feeling something not perfect.

My alignment is actually ok.  I can let go of the wheel at highway speeds and it drives straight.

I'm thinking my next step is maybe swapping on my winter wheel/tire and taking off the repair wheel and tire, to see if maybe the tire itself has an issue that the Mavis shop didn't find.

Any other thoughts on what to check?

[Scubaboo]

Probably the wheel or tire.  You may have a shimmy from the damage.

Were you present when they put it on the wheel balancer after the repair?  It is possible to get the tire to show balanced on the machine even if it shimmys.

I'd check there first if alignment feels ok.

[DrD123]

if the wheel is balanced and true now, and it's still vibrating, something could be broken/bent - did you look at the outer tie rod end and control arm on that side?  also look closely at the strut.

[MoleMan]

Op,

 

Have the bent wheel moved to the rear. If you still have the vibration after that you probably toasted a Control Arm Bushing.

In this case don't take it back to the tire shop you went to. Seems like they are idiots.  The first thing the shop should have done after telling you was to move it to the rear and then come back of you feel it again.

Edited October 5, 2023 by MoleMan

[capttris]

Thanks everyone for the help!  After all these years driving and working on cars, I didn't know there was a difference between regular high speed balancing, and "road force balancing".  Road Force is apparently a better balance as it puts weight/pressure on the tire as it spins.

I found a different tire shop that does Road Force.  They got all 4 wheels to balance, but noticed that the other right side wheel had a slight bend in the inner lip.  Mavis didn't catch that.

The new tire shop said to drive the car and see how it feels to me, before deciding on repairing the tiny bend on the lip of the 2nd wheel.

The car feels pretty good now though.  Every driving surface is different so it's hard to tell, but I think I'm ok.

To make matters worse, the Bridgestone Turanza 215/50/17 tires that I have are discontinued and I couldn't find a single one on the internet, anywhere.  Not even Ebay.  Then I found a guy on Marketplace and bought a brand new/used tire that he had on a full size spare, and he said was used once for 5 miles when he got a flat.

I bought the extra tire just in case the tire shop told me the tire has an internal issue (which I was starting to expect. It was a really hard hit)

I'm seeing that places that shave tires down to match tread depth, will NOT shave a used tire.  I'm hoping to really clean up this new take off tire and save it in case I need to get it shaved -for a future blow out.

So for now, I think I'm good.  thanks everyone!