Tire Balancing
Need four new tires for the rear. I am in the process of getting prices. I know there are all sorts of posts regarding pricing and where to get them, but I am going to stay local, get the best price I...
Forum Discussion
Spizzer wrote:
I'm in the same boat, checking out tires and balancing. I have been pursuig the FMCA pricing. My local Michelin rep said they generally only balance the steer tires and not even bother with the back four. Anybody else heard of this?
jeff
BAD IDEA. We replaced the rear tires on our 2001 Adventurer at about 45,000 miles we asked the shop to balance them with Equal balancing powder. All was well for about 25,000 miles, then they began to vibrate. After another 10,000 miles I'd had enough. On our way to Key West we stopped at a tire store and asked them to remove the tires, take out the balancing powder, and rebalance them with external weights.
When the technician removed the first tire from the rim he called me back for an inspection. There was never any powder installed in that tire or any of the others on the rear axle. The tires already had huge flat spots and he wasn't sure he could balance them.
The worst tire took over 12 ounces to balance it and the remaining 3 took over 8 ounces each. Even then we could still feel the flat spots when driving 45 - 50 mph. Tires that should have given us 60,000+ miles were now being replaced at 35,000 miles because they weren't balance when they were installed. Don't let anyone tell you all the tires don't need to be balanced unless they agree in writing to replace them if they get destroyed to to an imbalance problem.
