Wheel/Tire balancing?

Is there anything special I need to let the shop know when I ask them to balance my tires? I feel like they never get it right. I'm running cooper discoverer at3 265/70/17 on my tacoma, and ko2s on my wifes sequoia. Both vehicles steering wheels shake around 45mph. Does anyone recommend letting a Toyota dealership balance tires? I'm running stock recommended tire size.

 

It may not be the tires. Tell them about the shakes.

 

You can ask for road force balancing, but that may not solve the problem.
Uca, lca bushings, tie rods, ball joints, u joints on the drive shaft and improper torque on the wheels can all cause this issue as well.

 

should a dealership be able to diagnose that?

Tacoma has 65k miles.
Sequoia has 20k miles.

 

They should, but there is no guarantee on that. Take the tech/service manager for a ride, so they see what the problem is.

 

Just keep going to different tire shops until you find one that knows what they are doing. I talked to multiple people at the discount tire I was going to that had no idea what the yellow/red circles on tires were for. It turns out the majority of people are just plain terrible at their job.

 

take it to a truck customs shop. they usually know what they are dealing with with tires that are harder to balance

 

Only way I could get my tires to balance was to have the dealer do it. Both my coopers and falkens would not balance correct with a regular style balancer.

 

does the dealership have a different machine that balances tires?

 

They have a special adapter that fits the larger center bores of our wheels. I guess it make the balancing more accurate.

 

when building a virgin tyre rubber is displaced in several planesicle



most virgin tyres are not balanced ..............

placed on a machine its not warm or hot

weight is not applied tho many think ‘ road force ‘ balancing can mimic actual rolling

resistance tyre mounted on a vehicle

rolling on the current alignment

iv shown a few that ride along beside their vehicle how

heat

weight

centrifugal forces simply distort the tyre

ccurrent alignment

Impossible to compensate for ALL aspects

balance as U will............drive on very good conditions

no potholes etc

take that tyre/wheel off after 1000km..................is it still balanced

no

 

I had mine road force balanced at an independent shop because I was having some issues with vibes and noise. The issue turned out to be a bad front wheel bearing but the guys doing the road force did it right. One wheel had a ton of weights on it from the last balance and they took me all off and match mounted the tire to help balance it out rather than sticking on tons of weight. On their machine they adjusted all 4 tires that were balanced at town fair tire when I bought them. All about techs that know what they’re doing and are willing to take the time to get it right, not just good enough to get out the door. Generally dealerships and shops all have very similar Hunter balancing machines with the exception of the ones that have the road force machines.

 

Suggest to use STICK-ON weights on the inside of the rim inline with the mount surface of the wheel.

Your problem could be caused by what is known as Lateral Imbalance.

Think of an off-balance not around the wheel rotation centerline, but perpendicular to the wheel mount. Or simply, wheel wobble.

Placing the weights inline with the mount surface will reduce the leverage of the wheel wobble.

 

So I was getting a vibration in the steering wheel after my last service. 2019 25k. I run 285 75 R16 KO2. Anyways, the dealer said the issue was actually the wheel balancing. They also said it requires a special balancer they don't have, so they just rotated the tires back and the shake went away. So are they referring to the force balancing, or were they up to something else? Kind of seemed weird that they couldn't balance a tire because i have off road tires, but hey what do I know? Answer, not a lot about tire balancing.

 

Could be the road force balancer, but hard to say. Odd the dealership didn’t take your money to do another balance job on them anyway lol. You can go on the Hunter website to find shops that have the road force machines. I had mine road forced. Didn’t fix my vibes but it sure fixed the crappy balance the big box tire shop did