Reading these posts about new Spyders and even earlier Spyder having vibrations that are not drive belt related, reminds me of one local Spyder owner I helped. After several visits to his dealership, actually a very highly rated and respected dealership, the service department gave up and insisted the vibration was normal. The dealership even refused to work on the issue any further.
I offered to this owner to bring the Spyder by, as it was most likely improperly balanced front tire(s). Told him, within 15 minutes we would have a pretty good idea of exactly what was causing the vibration.
We planned a day and time. He rode to my house. We chatted a few minutes, followed by me jacking the left front and removing the wheel. Put it on my dynamic balancer and sure enough the dealer had not correctly balanced, or never rebalanced the left front. Forget the exact imbalance, but believe it was about 1 ounce. The right side was checked and was in balance.
Again we chatted. I suggested to him, let me correctly dynamic balance both fronts on my balancer using the finest / race settings. So then, in under 30 minutes, I rebalanced both of his oem Kendas. Obviously, had him go for a test ride. He came back all smiles. While I do not endorse the speed he tested to, suffice to say, it was adequately fast with no vibrations.
That Spyder accomplished a long vacation trip from SoFlo up into the Carolinas. I got a phone call later from a very happy owner, no vibrations to over 100 mph. A few weeks ago, and now more than a year on those fronts, he called and said all is still great.
Still each time I read these vibration topics, it becomes apparent that even good dealers sometimes lack the skills to correctly balance Spyder tires. Even more possible is the shop lacks proper equipment to correctly balance Spyder stuff.
As for checking runouts, you can, but unless the tire has a hop to it, pretty much all but the best high performance tires will show some lateral and vertical runout.
FWIW, our Spyder, when new, had a nasty vibration. Initially I was under the impression it was normal. Within two weeks after purchase, I checked and did a true dynamic balance on our oem fronts. One side was close, the opposite side from oem was 1 1/4 ounces out of balance. Rebalanced both and vibration was gone. Fast forward about 8000 miles, I replaced both oem Kenda front tires with Federal Fomoza high performance car tires. Mounted and balanced them myself. Very, very smooth. Then about a year ago, I bought a used set of Centramatic balancers for the fronts for short money. Suffice to say that quality high performance lightweight car tires, installed and correctly balanced, as if a race tire setup, then have Centramatics as a finishing touch, about the only thing to make it check every box would be to skim the treads.
Correctly balance what you have, even if you pay the money to a tire shop, better still someone or a shop that does race cars.
