Will my car tires ever balance

Factual Questions
1

I just had new tires put on my car by the local Tire Kingdom. Right away, I could tell that they were not balanced properly, so I brought the car back in the day after the initial install. The tech indicated that they were a little off-balance and “fixed” them.

I then went on vacation for a few weeks, and upon my return took the car on a highway trip. While the tires seemed fine during city driving, speeds over 60 mph introduced excessive vibration.

Now, my father in law told me that I should have insisted, from the get go, that if the tires needed balancing using the “bigger, longer” weights, that Tire Kingdom replace them entirely as they were defective. A few other people told me that some sets of tires could not be balanced properly, but could not explain why. They generally agreed that good tires would only need smaller weights to properly balance, as they should all be close to a standard weight to begin with. This is not the case with my tires - each has a different weight, and 2 of them are the bigger weights.

So, my question is, could I have a defective set of tires that will never balance properly? I realize that other problems could possibly cause the vibration (such as bent rims), but never had this problem with the old tires.

Its now been 2 months since the install, and while the tires came with lifetime balancing, I’m curious as to what recourse I may have if they never stop vibrating. Are there any ways to test tires for other defects, such as issues with roundness or diameter? How exactly can I prove to them that the tires may be defective?

Thanks,

   Joe
2

You need to find yourself a tire place that has a Hunter machine. Hunter is a brand of wheel/tire balancers that are the rolls-royce of the industry. They balance the tire and wheel on all axes. A shop that has one of these means they they not only have the best equipment, but they are more likely to do a quality job of balancing. The hunter machine should be able to tell you definitively if there is something out of spec with your tires.

Something else that might be happening is that the weights the shop is applying are falling off. They are just stuck on w/ adhesive, and if the shop doesn’t clean the area well, they can and will fall off.

So in the end my advice is find a better tire shop and make sure they have the best equipment.

Tire balancing info from Hunter

3

Sometimes a careful realignment of the tire to the rim can help. Often there’s a heavy spot on the rim, and a heavy spot on the tire. If they’re next to each other, it compounds the imbalance. A sharp tire man should be able to mount the tires so that these heavy spots are opposite each other.

4

Often, this is a sign you need a wheel alignment, not just a balancing job. Specifically, you will NOT just want a front-end alignment, but a four wheel (or full) alignment.

[Also, as your tires age, you should be aware that aged tires will cause a vibration if not periodically rotated. Sometimes, aged tires wearing unevenly are called “cupped” which can cause a vibration around 60 mph.]

Also, if the excessive vibration occurs only when braking, it is not your tires. (You can especially feel this through the brake pedal while braking.) It is mostlikely your front-end brakes. This indicates that your rotors (of front end brakes) need to be resurfaced. The common phrase used for this is “your rotors need turning”. Periodically, this needs to be done.

Hope this gives you some food for thought regarding various causes (sources) of vibration. - Jinx

5

I’ve only come across one tire that would not balance.

Go back to the dealer and tell him that you are very dissatisfied .
Tell them to balance the tires at highway speed.
Sometimes a whack along the side of the head is needed.

6

Thanks for all the responses.

racekarl - I checked, and the vendor does not have a Hunter machine. I’m thinking it may be worth the extra $20 to take it to one that does if they can’t get it right.

GaryT - is sophisticated equipment needed to identify this problem?

Jinx - I had no problems with the older set of tires, and the vibration does not appear to be due to braking. The newer ones only seem to vibrate at highway speeds when I’m at a contant speed or accelerating.

justwannano - I am definitely taking it back to them. Unfortunately, I put about 1200 city driven miles on the tires before I took the car on the highway and noticed it was bad. Don’t think they’ll swap the tires now, but hopefully they can carefully try to balance them again. If not, I’m not sure what I can do - they come with a lifetime balance warranty, but I’m not sure if this covers defects altogether.

Regarding weights falling off, each tire has them, and they’re all different sizes, so I don’t think I lost any. I realize that the manufacturing process will never make each tire identical, but it does concern me that there seems to be such a difference from tire to tire. Should they really vary that much?

7

I’ve never found any tires that you could second guess the weights needed to balance. They were all different.
I have never installed tires as a sole job but I’ve balanced many dozens of tires over the years.
I know it would make a difference to the people I worked for if a customer complained.

8

Is sophisticated equipment needed to identify this problem [heavy spot on tire next to heavy spot on rim]?

Not that I know of. Mounting tires is one thing I do not do; this is something I’ve read about in trade journals. The best I can recall, it mainly involves visual inspection, e.g. locating a seam. A knowledgeable tire man should be able to explain it satisfactorily and in more detail.

9

Aah, no is the answer here. The closer the tire and wheel combo is to being balanced, the less weight will be on the rim. If it only takes 1 oz of weight to balance the tire, putting 5 ozs on won’t make it better it will make it worse. If the tire and wheel are properly located it may only take 0.25 oz total to balance the assembly.

Most tire have a dot (either a paint spot or a stamp to indicate where the valve stem should be located. This tends to put the heavy spot of the tire opposite the light spot of the wheel. (this is a good thing) If the tires are mounted heavy to heavy it is obvious by the extreme amount of weight required to balance.

Now tire will sometimes move along the rim after mounting. A lubricant is used to mount the tires. In the first few thousand miles of driving the tire can rotate in relation to the wheel causing a out of balance condition. Usually one visit back to the shop is all that is required to fix that.

While Hunter does make a wonderful machine (maybe the best around), a great balance is possible with any good commercial machine assuming that the installer knows what he is doing, and the machine is in calibration.
Snap-on, Bear, FMC, Coats, Eagle all make machines that will balance wheels on cars just fine.

It sounds to me like you don’t drive at high speeds on a regular basis. if this is true, you may have had something wear on the suspension which is causing the vibration. Yeah I know you said the old tires didn’t vibrate, but if you only drive at high speed sometimes, the wear could have got to the point of being noticed at about the time you put the new tires on. A quick check by a competent mechanic should be able to rule this out.

I have never seen a tire that couldn’t be balanced. I have seen one tire brand/ model that had problems staying in balance (my own car had to rebalance every 5K). The very few times that I have seen tires that were thought to be unbalanceable, it was always some type of foreign object inside the tire throwing the balance off. A loose balance weight (this one drove us nuts for about an hour till we pulled the tire off), water, or even tire sealant can cause balance problems.

I would do this:
[ul]
[li]Take the car back for a rebalance[/li][li]As soon as you leave the shop, go for a romp on the highway.[/li][li]If the problems still exists have the suspension checked out.[/li][/ul]

10

I carpooled with a guy who had this problem, and it drove him crazy for a few weeks. It took several trips back to the tire store before someone finally pulled the tire off the rim and discovered the water inside it.

11

Some years ago I purchased a set of tires and had the same problem. I took the car into a car dealer and had them balanced. When I went to pick up the car I was told that the tires could not be balanced because one or more tires were out of round. Went back to the place where I purchased the tires and told them what I was told. They replaced the tires with no questions asked. That solved the problem. That is the first time that I have ever heard of tires being out of round.