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Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 10:42 pm
by christensent
Anyone know of a place in the greater Seattle area that will balance tires really well (not road-force due to beadlocks)? Discount Tire isn't doing a good enough job to keep the wobbles away with 120 pound tire/wheels on my jeep. Not supposed to dynabead double-beadlocks although I could give it a try if I have to.

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:05 pm
by Nobody
Yeah, that's a tough one, especially with beadlocks. In order to get a reasonable result on some tires, you have to be willing to rotate the tire 180* on the wheel and/or dismount and flip the tire. Most places just aren't willing to put forth that effort.

Sometimes, just rotating and/or flipping the tire on the wheel can be enough to eliminate the need for weight at all. So if you have a really bad tire, it might be worth trying that yourself. Also moving the worst tire to the right rear of the vehicle will help, but that doesn't help when you need to rotate your tires.

The shops that also do semi-truck tires will typically be a little better at balancing bigger tires.

The only person that I know of that might be worth talking to is Rob Picklesimer. I worked with him at Les Schwab 20 some years ago. He's a manager at one of the Everett Les Schwabs (Silver Lake). He's an old school snow wheeler and knows where we're coming from. I don't know if he would be willing to deal with beadlocks though. Some sort of dynamic balancing might be your best bet.

What sort of symptoms do you have?

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:08 pm
by bobracing
Dynamic balancing works well.
Wallyworld air soft pellets work well and with beadlocks they are easy to install.
You can also try balancing with a bubble, take a look at YouTube. This might take a little investment but if you're in-control, might be with it.

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:49 pm
by christensent
I had full death wobble once before upgrading my track bar to one with much more steel. Then I was pretty well off and only had a bit of wobbles in the 30-40mph range. I just had Discount rotate and they re-balanced them and now I have some fairly scary wobbles in the 50mph range (although fortunately not full death wobble... yet).

Dynamic balance isn't recommended on double-beadlocks because the beads can get stuck inside the inner ring. People do it though and say it works out fine.

As for rotating the tire on the wheel, I could but it takes a forklift or big hydraulic press to dismount these rims in addition to a new $20 o-ring every tire every time. Not something I want to do, I'd go for it once to put balancing beads in if I just can't solve it but I really want to just get a great spin balance.

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:28 pm
by Nobody
I don't think you can really expect to get a good spin balance without moving the tire around. They just end up adding tons of unnecessary weights, which inevitably get knocked off or fall off. Doing the bubble balance as Bob suggested might be a good option.

That o-ring situation with the beadlocks sucks. I also don't like not being able to dismount those things in a trail repair situation. If you do a lot of street miles, as it appears you do, you might want to consider moving to a different wheel. I'd take good street manners any day over the rare blown bead.

I'm not really familiar with the jeep front ends, but it is possible what you're feeling isn't all from tire balance. Make sure everything is good and tight! Does rotating the tires change the symptoms at all?

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 6:24 pm
by christensent
Rotating them did make it slightly worse but not by much. I don't think it's anything loose, went around and checked torques a while back. Might try adjustable control arms to get my caster angle back to stock.

Otherwise, I guess I'll just live with it for now. It's not that bad or dangerous, I just fear it'll get worse as most people report with similar cases. The street manners are perfect except for a wobble every once and a while when hitting a bump just right. I can go 80 and it's perfectly smooth.

I can't imagine not having beadlocks. I aired down once before getting them to 15PSI and the next week a tire was hissing with mud in the bead. My friend dropped down to 5psi this weekend and the beads had clearly leaked air. I don't want to mess with that stuff.

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:35 am
by Nobody
christensent wrote: The street manners are perfect except for a wobble every once and a while when hitting a bump just right. I can go 80 and it's perfectly smooth.
This sounds more like a symptom of minor death wobble than a balance issue. In some cases, everything being tight isn't enough. You can run into situations where the frame is flexing at the track bar mount or where the steering box is mounted, especially where drop brackets are used. On the Early Broncos, the frame must be reinforced around the steering box.

Re: Place To Get Tires Balanced Well

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:46 pm
by christensent
bobracing wrote: You can also try balancing with a bubble, take a look at YouTube. This might take a little investment but if you're in-control, might be with it.
A long shaky year with a lot of wasted parts... just got the Harbor Freight bubble balancer tonight. I guess I didn't even know what balanced tires feel like.

Discount Tire decided to not put on half a pound of weights on one tire and put 3oz on the WRONG SIDE of the other front tire. One more task that nobody but me will be touching.

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