Question for alignment/tire balancing techs ... So many tire weights!?

For the last 5000 miles my truck has been in and out of the alignment shop for a small steering wheel shake/vibration around 50-60mph.

I have the lifetime alignment deal so Id get it aligned and balanced but a week or so later the shake was back. This was repeated 3 times with the same results. The shop finally said
"well it's because you lifted your truck and have big tires, just going to be like that"

Translation: they are tired of working on it.

After checking out the wheels for dents, wobbles and cracks all looks good (they are new ish wheels and tires with only 8k on them) BUT there are tons of weights on 1 wheel.
I took that wheel off and no more shake!

Question: should I ask for yet another tire balance or is this amount of weight and stacked weights just a bad service tech, bad tire, or wheel??

Also... wouldn't placing weights 180° apart counteract each other??



That's about 10oz of weight and there are 2 rows in the bottom some double stacked.

 

Did you check if they removed the old weights when balancing the tires because it should not have that much.

 

I can see marks left behind from where weights had been removed previously. All these weights look newer

 

Sounds like you have a bad wheel and/or a bad tire.

 

Take it to another shop and have them try to balance that one tire to see if the other garage was just ignorant

 

Sometimes helps to bust the bead loose and rotate the tire on the rim 180 degrees. Then air up and rebalance. That's an awful lot of weight stuck on there, even for a big aggressive tire.

 

Find a reputable tuner shop or offroad shop in your area and have them balance for you.

I had a vibration that I got balanced multiple times and never resolved the problem. I went to a tuner shop who works on track cars and they balanced my wheels and checked balance before to verify work of previous place. All my tires were significantly off. My wheel vibration is gone now.

 

Wheel could be out of true. In my area there's 4-5 shops that can straighten wheels. Only takes 1 big pothole or buckle to cause this.

Also have you ruled out tire flat spotting? I'll get crazy steering wheel shimmy around 67-69mph after the truck has sat for more than 12 hours. Usually resolves after 20 mins of driving though.

 

I will start by trying another shop. Just sucks I paid for the lifetime alignment only good at 1 shop :/
I don't do alot of rough driving so hopefully nothing is damaged.

Glad I bought a matching 5th wheel and tire as a spare

 

It could be the tire is out of round. I had this happen many years ago and no amount of balancing would take the shake out. It turn out to be a flat spot on the tire and the tire shop ended up using a machine to true the tire. If I remember correctly, it took a skim cut across the outside tire surface while it was still mounted on the truck. No more shake after that. It was a bias-ply snow tire.

 

Sounds like theres no need to get another alignment done. If you know for a fact that one specific wheel is causing the wobbles...you should've tossed that in the spare location a long time ago and been done w/ it.

 

Have you tried moving the front tires to the back?

 

Are they using a road force balancer? Only way I could get my wildpeaks to balance was to have a Toyota dealer road force balance my wheels. Many other have reported the same issue. Tacomas are VERY sensitive to tire balance.

FYI both my 2nd gen and 3rd gen have a slight on and off shake at 50-60. I blame the highway as both my trucks do it.

 

Basically just realized it is this specific wheel. Why the shop never said anything is beyond me... but I always like to rotate 5 tires.
Otherwise the spare tire just goes to waste after it just sits for too long

 

Yep, no steering wheel shake when the bad tire is in the back but still a little vibration.

 

Ha I had the same experience with lifetime alignment plans. Bought one through Tires Plus and apparently their alignment rack was not in the best shape and the tech swore he was doing it right. Had to spend $50 at an indie shop run by a crotchety (but skilled) old mechanic and he did it right.

 

Probably one or both of the front tires are out of round. You can try contacting the manufacturer or the retailer you bought them from to see if they will gets you some replacements.
I had a similar experience with some Falken Wildpeaks, re-balanced multiple times but always had an intermittent shimmy. I changed to some Coopers recently, no more shimmy but now it pulls right slightly lmao.

 

Just throwing this in, you never know...

https://onroadtips.com/red-dot-on-tire/

 

Very interesting I did not know that

 

I would do as suggested and take just that tire to a different shop explain your problem and see if they can get you some better information. Your question about them being 180 from each other is both yes and no. You have to balance both the inside and outside of the wheel. You can static balance only using weights in the center but that wheel should be balanced like it is. If you had weight on the outside and then more on the outside at 180 that’s called counter balancing and should not really be done. The amount of weight on there is definitely an indication of problem and the placement tells me they are trying to compensate for some issues but without being able to put it on the balancer I wouldn’t even bother to make a guess as to what.