Wheel balancing problems

[302w 83]

Purchased new 30x10.5 R16 all terrain tires from Wal-Mart online and had them mounted/balanced with an alignment by mavis sunday. Drive home was smooth at 40mph.

 

Drive to work was horrible. 55mph, shaking bad. Had mavis by work rebalance it and they told me the first balance was definitely off.

 

Drive home, intermittent shaking. Would be okay for old tires but I consider it bad for new balanced tires. 65-70mph.

 

Drive in, pretty good. Occasional shudder at highway speed. Drive home in rain, constant light shaking at speed.

 

Suggestions? I don't want to bring it to mavis daily as eventually they will start blaming my car. I kind of want to try dynabeads but I feel like there's a problem I'm missing.

 

Lower balljoints are new, shocks are new. Torsion bar Ford front end.

[67gtonut 847]

What brand of tires?

[302w 83]

What brand of tires?

General. Grabber AT2s

[Lostboy 105]

Who did the tires and alignment? It is possible that there is a tire with a defective belt that could have shifted. Also, I hate to say this, a lot of the shops out there doing alignments have no business doing them. Especially Mavis, who basically hires those with little or no experience.

 

 

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[diamondd817 826]

Have the tires Road Force Balanced (RFB). It will eliminate the possibility of a bad (out of round) tire or tires and make the vehicle ride smooth.

[fishnut 2,358]

General. Grabber AT2s

not the first time ive heard about issues with this brand.

[67gtonut 847]

Yeah.... the Floatation size truck tires can be tough to balance..... and General is the economy division of the Michelin Corp.  So they might have some roadforce issues 

[tony357 386]

did you have an issue before if not it is the tires!! I had set of mastercraft tires that had same issue they blamed it on one of my rims that had small dent never had an issue before with two sets of other tires, wore those mastercrafts out and had new tires mounted and the issue went away. I also had a set of grabber two's on my work truck there was a light vibration above 50 but not enough to bitch about and those tires were terrible they clog very easy and only lasted 24k. I have gone back to firestone on my work truck best tires I have had so far after trying several other brands.  

[Sota 1,191]

also try a tire rotation. see if the problem follows a specific pair or single tire.

I know it sucks hunting these kinds of things down, but the more ammo you can bring to the table, pointing to the tire(s) being bad, the better.

It does happen a bad tire gets put out of a factory. I've seen brand new tires slip a belt with 100 miles, causing them to have a noticable defect in the shape of the tire.

[Krdshrk 3,877]

Have the tires Road Force Balanced (RFB). It will eliminate the possibility of a bad (out of round) tire or tires and make the vehicle ride smooth.

 

Had it done for the most recent set of tires for my car.  Definitely helped - there was a wheel that was out of round and it balanced out.

[SuRrEaLNJ 294]

alignment by mavis? it was probably in better spec going on their rack then coming off of it. ill give a cookie to anyone who can find a mavis tech that can explain an alignment more in depth then it involves a thing and they pay me to do it

 

Generals are not known for the smoothest ride either.

 

as others have said you can try a rotate and see if it moves

 

take it to a real shop, ie not mavis, sears, pepboys, sts etc and have them do the balance and align. road force would help, but ive honestly rarely had tires i couldnt balance out without it

 

i took this one a few years back, dont remember which of the aforementioned shops this was, but it was one of them and this is why i rag on them all:

in my career everytime ive gotten a car from one of those kinds of places its been a lesson in what your not supposed to do. one of my favorites is when they cut the shock bodies off the rear of a 4runner leaving the bushings and eyelets and welded the wrong shocks to the remaining eyelets because they didnt have the right ones (Patterson shop iirc)

or when i met a guy who worked for sears who god comision for replacing wheel studs, he hammered, like literally hit with a hammer,  atleast one on every car he worked on... i could do this all day....

 

 

[302w 83]

I think I'll keep bringing it back. Maybe I'll get lucky

[djg0770 481]

I can tell stories and I only worked in this field for 5 months MANY years ago.  Technically I should not have been doing one iota of what I did (OSHA and being a minor and all), but I learned many aspects of the tire business.  I studded tires, dismounted, mounted, and balanced them, patched them, etc.

 

I had a particularly bad set of tires once that just wouldn't balance, they were a train wreck.  I won't tell you HOW we fucked up but between my boss and I, we fucked up.  Being that I was (quite a few years) under 18 I still blame it on him.  You don't put a minor in charge of something so important and never check his work.

[shooter28 153]

General Tires and Mavis dont have good reputations. Instead of going back to the same place, take it to a real tire shop and have them looked at by someone who knows what they are doing. They should be able to tell you if its the tires themselves or just a balancing problem.

[302w 83]

I had good results with General before.

 

Is this no bueno? I never used plastic wheel weights. Wheels previously were lead or zinc clip one

 

[diamondd817 826]

Wow, that looks loose enough to move around. Can't be good.

[Zeke 5,504]

Cry only once more and have them balanced at a reputable shop. How much is your aggravation and time worth? Let alone the wear and tear on your steering and suspension due to divergent harmonics.

[T Bill 649]

That is the wrong profile wheel weight. That tech is don't make me say it.  

 

Look up your style here.

http://www.perfectequipment.com/content/site/dateien/9672013_PEI_ApplicationGuide.pdf

 

There is a code and numbers on the weight.  The numbers are the weight of the weight, the letters the style.

 

Time to call Mavis management. 

 

These tires are hard to balance, my GMC Canyon has similar problems.  

[Golf battery 1,223]

Who did the tires and alignment? It is possible that there is a tire with a defective belt that could have shifted. Also, I hate to say this, a lot of the shops out there doing alignments have no business doing them. Especially Mavis, who basically hires those with little or no experience.

 

 

So true about mavis.

 

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[SuRrEaLNJ 294]

Is this no bueno? I never used plastic wheel weights. Wheels previously were lead or zinc clip one

 

 

 

sweet baby jesus someone take the tools away from that "tech"

[tony357 386]

here are firestones i had put on in the fall you can see where the wieghts were for the generals 2's we took off plus the one damaged rim they said caused the vibration that no longer exists.

 

rear

 

 

 front you can see where weight was rusted rim. took pic of tread so you can see that they are aggressive tires.

 

[tony357 386]

I really need to clean and paint those rims.

[tony357 386]

alignment by mavis? it was probably in better spec going on their rack then coming off of it. ill give a cookie to anyone who can find a mavis tech that can explain an alignment more in depth then it involves a thing and they pay me to do it

 

Generals are not known for the smoothest ride either.

 

as others have said you can try a rotate and see if it moves

 

take it to a real shop, ie not mavis, sears, pepboys, sts etc and have them do the balance and align. road force would help, but ive honestly rarely had tires i couldnt balance out without it

 

i took this one a few years back, dont remember which of the aforementioned shops this was, but it was one of them and this is why i rag on them all:

in my career everytime ive gotten a car from one of those kinds of places its been a lesson in what your not supposed to do. one of my favorites is when they cut the shock bodies off the rear of a 4runner leaving the bushings and eyelets and welded the wrong shocks to the remaining eyelets because they didnt have the right ones (Patterson shop iirc)

or when i met a guy who worked for sears who god comision for replacing wheel studs, he hammered, like literally hit with a hammer,  atleast one on every car he worked on... i could do this all day....

 

 

They were chasing that one..

[302w 83]

Mavis manager called me. Very apologetic, straightforward, offered to repair my stripped wheel stud, etc. I told him I'd do it myself since I probably have to do the parking brakes and rear pads anyway. Offered free labor if I supplied parts.

 

 

I forgot to mention i have a stripped stud. I have no idea if they stripped it but I assumed they did. Any shop would have offered to get me to pay for it if it came in like that.

 

I have a lot of respect for the guy for the way he handled it.

 

Local shop is $30 to balance four wheels. I'm tempted to bring it there.

[Malsua 1,422]

I had a set of Yokahomas put on an SUV I owned some time back and after re-balancing several times at the one shop, I paid to get them road-force balanced and they still vibrated slightly.    That second shop claimed one of the wheels was bent and since there was ZERO vibration before I got the new wheels, I can only assume the first shop did it somehow.  I drove that POS for another 40k miles till I bought new wheels and tires and it was smooth again.

[Zeke 5,504]

Mavis manager called me. Very apologetic, straightforward, offered to repair my stripped wheel stud, etc. I told him I'd do it myself since I probably have to do the parking brakes and rear pads anyway. Offered free labor if I supplied parts.

 

 

I forgot to mention i have a stripped stud. I have no idea if they stripped it but I assumed they did. Any shop would have offered to get me to pay for it if it came in like that.

 

I have a lot of respect for the guy for the way he handled it.

 

Local shop is $30 to balance four wheels. I'm tempted to bring it there.

I'm thinking you'll be better off with local shop.

Send the bill to mavis

[Rabit536 1]

I had good results with General before.

Is this no bueno? I never used plastic wheel weights. Wheels previously were lead or zinc clip one

They are Teflon coated lead, which is fine to use so it doesn't scratch the rim but they used the wrong style. It looks like an aw when I think it should be mc. Wherever you take it make sure they do a dynamic balance and you don't have offset weights on the same side of the wheel.