Steering wheel vibration

[Engineer]

Picked up my R1S on Monday.

Did a test drive but didn’t get over 60 mph. Had 13 miles on it when I left.

as soon as I got on the highway the steering wheel started vibrating at 65 and got very bad at 75.

Rivian told me I could bring it to the SC in January for a balance… over 3 months to get the tires on a brand new $80k car balanced…

So I drove it the 2.5 hours home and took it to discount tire today and they found that both front tires were out of balance, the rears were fine. They charged me $88 (22 per tire) and when I looked at the wheels they had scratched up one of my wheels pretty decently. (20” darks)

I am pretty pissed about the whole situation.

anyone else have balance issues straight off the lot?

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[seanocono]

This is pretty common, unfortunately.

 

[Sevn86]

Very common and I’m still dealing with it. It’s the worst between 73-78 mph. I didn’t have the best experience with discount tire when I had a flat. The guy ended up jacking up the vehicle by putting the puck in the wrong hole and the Rivian almost came crashing down. It was a mess and I was pissed!

 

[Engineer]

Very common and I’m still dealing with it. It’s the worst between 73-78 mph. I didn’t have the best experience with discount tire when I had a flat. The guy ended up jacking up the vehicle by putting the puck in the wrong hole and the Rivian almost came crashing down. It was a mess and I was pissed!

They use pucks and put them in the right holes…. Ha…

but they put it on 4 rolling jacks at the same time and took alll 4 wheels off at once. And rested the jack handles on the paint on 2 of them.

I got caught taking pictures and didn’t get one with all the wheels off, but it was concerning to see.

 

[Sevn86]

They use pucks and put them in the right holes…. Ha…

but they put it on 4 rolling jacks at the same time and took alll 4 wheels off at once. And rested the jack handles on the paint on 2 of them.

I got caught taking pictures and didn’t get one with all the wheels off, but it was concerning to see.

Correct but since I only had one flat they used 1 puck to jack up that side. The guy working on my car placed the puck in the wrong hole and began lifting. Thank god I decided to go out there. The vehicle almost fell on that corner when the puck shifted. Made them document it in the event they caused some damage. I had to show him where to insert the puck by removing the plastic cover.

 

[BigE]

Picked up my R1S on Monday.

Did a test drive but didn’t get over 60 mph. Had 13 miles on it when I left.

as soon as I got on the highway the steering wheel started vibrating at 65 and got very bad at 75.

Rivian told me I could bring it to the SC in January for a balance… over 3 months to get the tires on a brand new $80k car balanced…

So I drove it the 2.5 hours home and took it to discount tire today and they found that both front tires were out of balance, the rears were fine. They charged me $88 (22 per tire) and when I looked at the wheels they had scratched up one of my wheels pretty decently. (20” darks)

I am pretty pissed about the whole situation.

anyone else have balance issues straight off the lot?

We’ve had our R1T for 10 months now. Same experience as yours..both alignment & balance were way out at delivery. In retrospect, I should have gotten a 3rd party alignment and rebalancing immediately. Rivian attempted months later…I finally had my local tire store remove all wheel weights and balance them. It now drives get. One note, SC did recently install a new, “heavier” steering wheel which also made a slight difference.

 

[Engineer]

We’ve had our R1T for 10 months now. Same experience as yours..both alignment & balance were way out at delivery. In retrospect, I should have gotten a 3rd party alignment and rebalancing immediately. Rivian attempted months later…I finally had my local tire store remove all wheel weights and balance them. It now drives get. One note, SC did recently install a new, “heavier” steering wheel which also made a slight difference.

Well I just took it out on the highway and the wheel still shakes, no change from before the balance….

I would take it back but I don’t want them to damage my wheels anymore.

 

[brij patel]

We’ve had our R1T for 10 months now. Same experience as yours..both alignment & balance were way out at delivery. In retrospect, I should have gotten a 3rd party alignment and rebalancing immediately. Rivian attempted months later…I finally had my local tire store remove all wheel weights and balance them. It now drives get. One note, SC did recently install a new, “heavier” steering wheel which also made a slight difference.

new steering wheels still i feel no difference. still shaking i am on 22 inch

 

[BigE]

new steering wheels still i feel no difference. still shaking i am on 22 inch

Have you tried a 3rd party tire shop?
I learned long ago, there is definitely a difference in tire stores/shop and level of skill or knowledge. So when I finally got tired of Rivian promising to fix the vibration, I bought the Rivian in with ~ 11k miles to my local shop. I asked them to strip all the weights off and rebalance them. The tech came up to tell me my truck was ready…he said, “I’ve never seen so many weights on a wheel”. He said, not sure who was trying to balance these, but it was a disaster. He said, they only need a few weights and now drives better than new. In retrospect, I should have done this the first week of ownership. On the heavier steering wheel…I think it’s a band-Aid approach to finding root cause.

 

[freshpow]

We’ve had our R1T for 10 months now. Same experience as yours..both alignment & balance were way out at delivery. In retrospect, I should have gotten a 3rd party alignment and rebalancing immediately. Rivian attempted months later…I finally had my local tire store remove all wheel weights and balance them. It now drives get. One note, SC did recently install a new, “heavier” steering wheel which also made a slight difference.

How did you get the new/heavier steering wheel? Did you have a service ticket open for tire balancing and that was part of the solution? First I am hearing of this and wondering if it's something I should request.

 

[DevSecOps]

How did you get the new/heavier steering wheel? Did you have a service ticket open for tire balancing and that was part of the solution? First I am hearing of this and wondering if it's something I should request.

I had my steering wheel replaced as well with the "heavier" one. I think it's like .5 lbs heavier if I remember correctly. Just ask them to replace it due to the shimmy. It reduced the shimmy in mine, but at 80mph it's still there, just not as bad. The heavier steering wheel has been discussed on here quite a bit.

https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/...el-vibration-at-high-speeds.15416/post-371712
https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/threads/took-delivery-6-21.16440/post-371702

As for the OP, I doubt he needs the heavier steering wheel because it's supposedly going on all the newer vehicles from the factory.

 

[BigE]

How did you get the new/heavier steering wheel? Did you have a service ticket open for tire balancing and that was part of the solution? First I am hearing of this and wondering if it's something I should request.

We had the vibrations and alignment issues from day one. At around 5k miles Rivian did alignment & balancing which didn’t help much. I later had a local shop do another alignment & fresh balance and this fixed a lot of issues.

At around 9k miles we got the tik toc noise with the front half shafts. I put in a ticket for the high speed vibration, misalignment steering wheel and the noisy half shafts. Rivian did the ting washer service, and aligned/replaced the steering wheel with a heavier one. The service advisor said it weighs 1/2 lb more.

As of today, it drives the best it has..super quiet and little to no vibration. Time will tell if the Ting Washers are just a bandaid repair or a real solution.

 

[UMKEMP]

Well I just took it out on the highway and the wheel still shakes, no change from before the balance….

I would take it back but I don’t want them to damage my wheels anymore.

SAME ISSUE
My R1S had the same issue took back to the service center 3 times.
They replaced with a heavier steering wheel first then the next time they replaced 2 tires but it still remained now they rebalanced the other 2 tires I have not picked it up yet to see if it is resolved.

 

[bpham904]

Our 2022 R1T continue to have severe vibration issue at 65mph and higher speed event with two brand new tires and balance by the Rivian Center in Orlando.....Is this a Lemon issue ?

 

[UMKEMP]

Our 2022 R1T continue to have severe vibration issue at 65mph and higher speed event with two brand new tires and balance by the Rivian Center in Orlando.....Is this a Lemon issue ?

My R1S is still at the service center,
I’m not sure if this is resolved however mine started to vibrate at 63 up .
With two new tires, they balanced the remaining two when I returned it the last time. They never placed both new tires in the front.
Because of some other test they do with the tires.
My R1S only have just over 2K miles.
How are you many others are
vibrating ???
It may be a design Flaw..

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