Hey Fellas,

So I when I drove off from the shop after having my 22s put on I had a horrid shake in the steering wheel from left to right, literally flailing as I went 60 mph. I didn't have the nerve to go faster.

I went back and had them balanced again the next day. The guy said the fronts were out of balance because they other guy who did the balancing only did a static balance. I guess static balance means balancing the wheel with stick on weights only on the very inside "lip" or edge of the rim.

So he did a balance where there were weights on the back side of the rim, hidden by the spoke. Because these stick on weights don't weight that much he put what seemed to me like a ton on. It's a patch probably have the size of a 7X11 sheet of printer paper.

The ride was perfect after that. Though one of the guys who worked in the back shop said it looked like one of them could be in need of ground force balancing as it seemed out of round at high speeds. However, apparently they don't have one and there are only 5 in the state of Minnesota, so who knows where they are.

Over the course of the past couple weeks the ride has deteriorated. I have a little nibble in the steering wheel which comes and goes and sometimes is worse then others. I also have a bumpy ride and you can definitely see it when the passenger's side front seat back is vibrating backwards and forewards.

So I called the shop and the guy who works in the front office says that is the way "big" rims are. They look great buy require constant balancing. I said in disbelief that you mean people with large rims go every other month and pay to have them balanced, his response was well maybe not every other month, but often.

So everyone with 22s and up, do you have problems holding a balance? What did they do to fix your problems if you had similiar ailments to mine? What should I do?

Thanks,

Duke

 

Sounds like a bad wheel or they just don't have any idea what they're doing. .

 

wow, that really sucks. i had my 22's put on this spring and still have no shake or vibration up to way over legal... shhhhhh!!!! i would have to agree and say it sounds like a bad wheel or they dont know what they are doing. if they are putting so much weight on one side have them break the bead and just spin the tire 180 degree. sometimes that really does wonders to help match the rim to the tire. (ya, i used to work in a tire shop quite a few years ago) good luck

 

It sounds to me like the place you had them mounted needs to invest in the proper equipment to spin balance larger rims.. I have a friend / business associate, that just spent $15,000 for a spin balancer to handle up to 24" rims for his tire business... If you want to do the job right you need the proper equipment...

 

Yeah I know what you guys are saying on the shop. They were/are really nice guys and one even stayed 2 hours past close to paint the calipers with me for free, so I don't think I'm dealing with jerks.

I'm going to talk to the head guy in a bit and I'll report back with what he says.

BTW, tires are Goodyear Fortera 305/45/22 and rims are Eagle Alloy 026.

Thanks,

Duke

 

You are going to have a rougher ride though. Less rubber to absorb the bumps.

 

Just talked with the guy in charge of the shop and he didn't give any indication they were going to charge me to fix the tires and rims like the other guy did.

I think I wasn't speaking with the "right" individual earlier. We made an appointment for 5:30 tomorrow since they're busy today. He said he'll make it a point to be there when I show up.

I read about the following terms to make sure I'm not going in there with only partial knowledge. Please feel free to add and teach me some more if you have the time!

Thanks fellas,

Duke

1. Road Force Balancing = machine used to balance tires which takes the "low" spot in the rim and matches it with the "high" spot in the tire, or vice versa.

2. Static Balancing = placing weights on the inside "lip" of the rim and not putting them further in towards the spoke

3. Too much weight in one spot? Break the beed and spin the tire on the rim 180 degrees to better match the rim to the tire.

4. More than 3 to 4 ounces of weight to balance a tire and rim combination means either a bad tire or bad rim.

5. The tire and rim combination should be under 20lbs road force to avoid vibration in the 04+ F150

6. INSERT YOURS HERE

 

If it was my truck I'd try to find a place with a road force balance machine. I had the same problems when I first installed my wheels. I had the tires balanced three times before I was told that the rims were probably out of round and there wasn't anything else they could do for me. I went to another shop that happend to have a road force balance machine, each tire had to be broken down and rotated to match the high and low spots. Then they placed stick on weights on the backside near the face of the wheel and the regular weights along the edge of the rim on the back. The tire's balanced and no longer shake at highway speeds.

 

That's way too much weight. Generally speaking, if a tire needs more than 6 ounces of weight to balance, something's wrong. Either the wheel ain't setup right on the balancer, something's wrong with the wheel or the tire, whatever.

Static balance sucks...what you want is a dynamic balance with mixed wheel weights (that's exactly what it's called on a Hunter GSP9700 balancer).

 

Hey Q,

Thanks popping in and helping me out! I'll add up the weights they put on each rim and post them tonight.

So by mixed weights do you mean, stick on near the rim on the backside and hammer on weights on the back side of the rim?

Thanks again,

Duke

 

Yup.

 

usually those stick weights are 1/4 oz each one they should be about 1/8" thick and 1/2"x1/2" if you don't get the satisfaction you need from the shop you are dealing with look into big rig tire shops they are starting to balance those tires and we all know how tall those tires are most of those shops have the equipment to handle the job just that some of them maybe a little rougher on the rims then others.

 

Many tire mfrs. now mark the lightest and/or heaviest spot of the tire with a colored dot. This is talked about briefly in this document from Yokohama.

http://www.yokohamatire.com/pdf/tsb-...ance-12803.pdf

 

I had my rim and tire set-up RoadForce balanced from the get-go and have had no vibration problems whatsoever with them!

FWIW -- I just checked my rims, and the most stick-on weights I have on any one rim is a single strip that's maybe 5" long.

The rims are 22" American Racing Equipment "Magnets" and the tires are 305/40/22 BFGoodrich g-Force KDW's.....

 

For what its worth...my first set of 24in tires (Kumhos) were balanced once when the were mounted and never got out of balance for the entire 25,000 miles I ran them. They rode perfect from day one until the day they came off. My new Nexen tires were balanced when I bought them and that lasted about a week and then they got like your talking about....WAY out of balance. I carried them back and the tire guy said that sometimes the belts in lo-pro tires like these will shift a little when they are first ran (say with in the first 500 miles) and that will throw them off balance. So he rebalanced them and they have been perfect every since...about 2000 miles. The guy may have just been blowing smoke up my *** but he specializes in selling large rims and tires and has one of the hi-dollar mounting and balancing machines discussed earlier...so he probably knows what he his talking about.