I just had a set of new tires put on today at a local tire shop. I asked the guy to put the white-letters out, and asked for aluminum wheel weights instead of the lead type that can discolor polished aluminum. He said sure.

I watched the guy put the tires on the rims and balance my wheels. All of them balanced out perfectly at 0.00.

He then went to put my wheels on my truck. He started the lugnuts slightly on each lug by hand. Then he grabbed the impact gun and tightened each of them down in a cross-pattern. But he was torqing the hell out of them! I mean he was holding the impact gun on there for like 7 or 8 seconds on each lugnut!

I paid the guy and left. I was going to give him a small tip until he torqued the hell out of my lugnuts.

As I was driving home, I noticed a vibration at about 46-48 mph. It didn't do that with the tires that I just had taken off? I knew what it was though, the lugnuts! It felt like it was coming from the rear because my seat would shake, but not the steering wheel.

This morning I found the time to go out and jack my truck up, loosen them up, and re-torque them by hand. The right-rear wheel's lugnuts were so damn tight that I could hardly break them free with a lug wrench. I weigh 280 lbs and have arms bigger than my head, so that tells you how tight they were.

After I re-torqued all of them, I took my truck for a drive down the highway. There was just a hint of vibration at 48 mph.

My guess is that the rear lugnuts were so tight that it was putting tremendous pressure on the axle/diff bearings and problably the rear brakes/rotors too.

Edit:Two tires had excessive run out.

 

You can actually warp front rotors from tightening the lugs with an impact like you stated...

 

I have four-wheel disk brakes. So that's four rotors I'm just glad I caught the other fella's mistake, and they still brake smooth.

 

Man! I took the truck for a spin and it started doing it again. I took it back to the tire shop, and sure enough the right rear was out of balance. Seems to be ok now. Yes, I had to re-torque the rear lugnuts...again.

 

...oops

 

I believe that after this adventure I would be shopping around for a different tire shop. I am not sure of your local situation there but what ever you are saving on the front side will quickly be diminished by the long term cost of doing business there. Just IMHO !!!

 

Word on that. I still have the vibe, but it's at 40 mph now. It's not bad, but it's enough to shake the coins in my change holder on the dash. I took it back to them yesterday, and the tire guy said I was the fourth person to come back for re-balacing. He re-checked the back tires, and the right rear was .50 oz off. I thought he fixed it that time, but apparently not. When I got home, I noticed two big scratches on my back rims. One on each rim.

Oh yeah, his girlfriend just happened up out of nowhere while he was trying to work on my tire. His attention went immediately off of what he was doing, and straight to his g/f. I wonder what the problem is?

So, I took my truck back today and they told me they were too busy to look at it. So I went back near closing time and politely asked a worker there if they would take a look at my problem. He just smiled real funny and took me straight to the manager.

The manager flat out told me there's something wrong with my tires.

 

I bought a set of tires from Sam's club. They installed and balanced. Went down the road and got my teeth shook loose.

To late in the day to go back. Went the next day and the manager jumped right on it and fixed the problem. Seems the tool that attaches the wheel to the balancer had a piece missing off of it and was throwing the balance reading off. Every vehicle from 3 days prior had to be rebalanced.

So regardless of the manager's explaination, I still bet it is the balancer that is the problem or operator error.

 

I took my truck to a liscensed Goodyear service center today. They did a run-out test on all my tires, and two of them were out of round. The other two were ok. One tire was out of balance. They put the two out of round tires up front, and the good one's on the rear.

It still has a very slight shimmy @ 40 mph, but it's not as bad as before. It's "almost" tolerable to say the least. Do you think if I put a few more miles on the tires they will eventually "smooth out?" Or should I return them? I'd have to ship them back to the Discount Tire Direct warehouse in Ohio from Tennessee. It just seems like too big of a hassle to me, plus it's not that bad anymore after I had Goodyear take a look at them.

I also apologize for bad-mouthing the first tire shop I mentioned on here that I took my truck to. They were right, and I was wrong.

 

IMO they will get worse the more miles you put on them. I had one out a round tire b/f and thats waht happened to it.

 

It's amazing. I called Discount Tire Direct about my problem, and they told me I'll be recieving two new tires by ups in 2 days. And, they said they're going to arrange for UPS to come and pick up the old "out of round" tires free of charge with no s/h cost, and also reimburse me for the cost of having my tires mounted and balanced. I've never seen service as good as that ANWHERE. Discount Tire Direct rocks!

 

Discount Tire is taking care of it. If I'm not mistaken, the lady I spoke with said they would reimburse me the cost of two of the tires too.

 

Wow Peace can't beat that. I know this is a fairly old thread, but I'm in the market for tires and did a search on Discount for research and this thread came up.

A guy, well we're pretty good friends now, that rents the office suite next door to me has an Explorer and he bought some tires at a local shop and had them mounted and the studs on the front right wheel were bent, broken, cross-threaded or something, not sure WHAT they did. However, I was walking out and saw him pull into the parking lot and his whole wheel/tire was wobbling. He goes back and they can't even get the lug nuts off, they cut the studs! That's bad enough but listen to their solution, take one stud from each wheel and weld it to the bad one. I would rather have a replacement from a junkyard than let THEM weld on studs. I was very surprised at this since this was a long time business in the area with a good reputation. Come to find out, the original owner had died and a new owner/crew set up shop under his name. Ben was gonna threaten law suit, but they were outta business within two months. Lawn mower repair shop there now.

 

Damn! That's not right. Weld on the studs? Lmao. Some people are crazy in the head.

 

I always re-torque my wheels with a torque wrench whenever a shop removes a wheel from any of my cars. Then I re-check the torque after I've driven about 50 miles or so.

But I'm not normal