asinha

Thanks for all your answers. After a 3rd re-checking and re-balancing, the steering wheel vibration is gone now. Talking to all the mechanics/dealers/friends etc., one thing was clearly recommended: Get all 4 tires of same brand. So, now I'm gonna get myself 2 more Yokos for my rear wheels.

Today I took my car to the local Strauss auto shop to have it re-checked. The mechanic, at first glance remarked that the front Yoko Avid H4S tires are performance tires meant for sport cars, not for sedans like my car. Is the mechanic bull-*BLEEP*ting ? I had bought these tires from tirerack.com, where these are listed as suitable tires for my ES300. http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?ti...romCompare1=yes

I recently purchased a 2001 ES300 (my first Lexus) and the trip back from dealership to home on the freeway and other smaller in-town trips impressed me a lot by the butter-like smootheness and handling (used to drive a Landrover before, so you can imagine the difference). The car had Bridgestone Potenza RE92 205/60/R16 with 91H rating tires on all 4 wheels, but the 2 front tires were pretty shot. The back tires has plenty of tread remaining. So I went ahead and bought 2 Yokohama Avid H4S, same sizes and speed ratings (91H) and put them in the front. They were balanced and mounted etc. But immediately after that, I started experiencing a bit of continuous vibration in the steering wheel and the whole car itself at speeds on or above 55-60 mph. So, I went to another service shop to recheck the tires, and they balanced them and mounted them again. A bit of a test drive showed the problem had gone away, but apparently not. On a 900 mile trip last weekend, I had a terrible time with continuous vibrations of the steering wheel and car, even on the smoothest roads. Suffice to say this was not the Lexus driving experience I was looking forward to. Any suggestions what I can do now ? Change the front tires back to OEMs, but I hear a lot of complaints about them here. Change the back tires also to Yokohama ? Could the problem be caused by using a mix of diff. manufacturer tires even though size and ratings were the same ? Thanks in advance for all your suggestions.