dennis.ca

My truck gave me a bit of a scare this morning on the way to work. While accelerating off of an exit ramp and onto the highway the thing started to wobble like crazy. At 80kph the steering wheel was vibrating noticeably; at 100kph it was severe enough that I had to slow down.

Over the weekend I was a little frisky and drove through a considerable amount of snow (and packed snowbanks), so I suspected that there may have been some snow or ice packed on the inside of a wheel that was throwing off the balance. I didn't have time to take a good look until lunch and was getting a bit panicky about it. I have a tendency to become a bit -- attached -- to vehicles that I own.

Sure enough, a closer look revealed an ungodly amount of hidden ice in the right-front wheel. I never would have imagined so much could be stored in there yet remain out of plain sight. What you can't really see in the photograph above is a lip that drops down behind the spokes. It was that inner-lip that stored mass amount of snow that definitely threw the balance off in one corner of the car. I cracked everything off as best I could and took the thing through a car wash.

Panic turned to relief on the drive home as the problem seemed to be corrected. If you've got a late model Pathfinder LE with 17" wheels and an apparent high speed balance problem in the winter, you now know what to look for. This probably applies to any open-spoke wheel driven through deep snow.