Picked up my 62 plate RRs Luxury two weeks ago last today. Driving home the car felt ok up to 65mph, but had an underlying niggle / vibration : something was not quite in balance. Testing on private grounds, anything over 70mph and things got really exciting, at 85 it felt as if the car would shake itself apart. So, off to the local tyre shop and all 4 re-balanced. This carried out on a balancer that's just passed its calibration. Maybe a weight had gone missing, but given the issue a mighty large one. Travel back home on the local roads and the car feels smoother. On the way to work last Monday, oh lordy this is just not right. So a tele call to the local dealer ship. Discuss the issue and I'm advised to check for water in the rims ? So back down to the local tyre shop today, all rims off and tyres removed : hey presto : offside rear with approximately 1.5 / 2 litres of water on board. The fitters have never seen this before, so out came phones taking lots of pictures. I'm aware tractor tyres have water added as ballast for traction, but surely not a RRSport. Any ideas on how or why it got there ? (Fully aware compressors have moisture issues, but at the volume I'm thinking it must have been added).

Since its such a strange occurrence I'd be keen to ask the dealership why they thought this was the issue - have they seen it frequently?

Perhaps they have a dicky compressor and/or haven't be draining their moisture trap - did they sell you the car?

Perhaps the car had previously been off roading in deep water or just been in a flood that they were aware of, or recently experienced this from a previous sport.

Even if the rims have become porous there is no way water would get in whilst the tyres had pressure in them. You would also be losing pressure so for some reason water was deliberately put in or there was more water in the compressor tank than air.
Terry

Possibly so, but it may have been off roading with very low tyre pressures as often most people do.

The car came from a LR main dealer in Surrey, ex JLR management with 12k on the clock. Local dealership, is just outside Coventry. They advised experiencing water in rims on a "few" ex JLR vehicles, on the back of me discussing booking it for a health check to investigate the vibration. Looking around the chassis on the ramp it does not appear to have any of the usual witness marks from off-roading.

I have seen this before, but very rare, its normally caused by a garage or dealership not checking or not having a automatic water trap in the air system, or just no trap at all. You would be surprised how much water a bad system can inject in to the wheel when under pressure.
There is no way water can get in to a wheel while there is pressure in it even very low pressure. Once you get a small amount of water in a tyre and that tyre keeps going hot and cold then condensation builds up even more and makes it worse.
Thats why planes and racing cars use dry nitrogen to combat this..

Flack

^^^^

Think you nailed it Flack. Highly likely the compressor culprit was a factory associated one, given the other few ex management cars that have been seen with the same issue. Thing is though you could not really feel anything wrong until you were just around the legal limit. Then it would ramp up to something nasty in a very small increase of mph. This would be where the water no longer sat merrily in the bottom of the tyre, gravity taking over to a point where the water became a 1.5 kg out of balance mass / wheel weight !