Accounted below is my journey to find a proper wheel balance:

My 02 I35 w/73k miles developed vibrations I could feel in the steering wheel, floorboard and front seat about a month back. The shaking began after 50 mph, would smooth out at 65 mph, and return again. This seemed like a textbook case of improper wheel balance so I decided to take the car into a local Mr. Tire shop, as they had a $20 balancing+rotation special running. About 45 min later, the associate says I'm all set. I ask how off the balance was and he says "very." He says everything is good now so I go off on my merry way. I take a look at my rims in the parking lot and see a crap load of stick-on weights lined up. I don't think much of it since the associate did say the balance was "very" off. I hit the highways and low-and-behold, the vibrations return. It seemed like they came back even fiercer than before. I turn back around to Mr. Tire and tell them about the shakes I'm experiencing. They pull the car back in and 30 min later say two wheels "were perfect" but the other two were "slightly off." I leave, hit the highway and feel shakes again, albeit a little less.

I research around and read about the wonderful thing known as Road Force Balancing. I go into another Mr. Tire located near work and tell them about my displeasure with their ability to not properly balance my tires. They then say they'll Road Force balance my tires for half the normal cost and look over the suspension to make sure the vibrations aren't coming from there. I come back a little while later and the associate says the suspension is just fine and the Road Force balancing should take care of my shakes. I leave and take a look at my wheels. This time there are even more wheel weights stuck on than before! I hit the freeway and still feel vibrations. At this point, I am downright pissed at these people. I go back and voice my anger with Mr. Tire overall. They look at me like I'm crazy and hesitantly pull my car back in. They re-do the RF balance and say this the best they can get it. I drive off and again have a vibration-ridden ride. I get home, let the car sit for a while and check my tire pressure for kicks and notice it is 40-41 psi all around! Is it honestly that hard for these bastards at Mr. Tire to open the arm rest and actually read what PSI the car calls for? I drive the car for the next week and then notice 2 of my lug nuts have began backing out. These guys failed to even properly torque down all my wheels!

So I've had it with Mr. Tire at this point and decide to visit a local independent shop that works with custom sports cars and lifted 4x4s. I tell them about my sad ordeal trying to find a proper wheel balance and they say they can help me out. About $120 and 3 hours later, my car comes out perfectly RF balanced. I hit the highway and my baby is finally silky smooth all the way up to 100 mph. I didn't even realize the ride could be this soft and comfortable! Upon conversing with the manager of the local indy shop, he tells me Mr. Tire and other chains often skip out on the full Road Force procedure. A proper RF balance involves having the lowest Road Force value for each tire. This is achieved by actually breaking the bead on the tires, rotating the tire around the wheel, and making sure the high point of the tire is matched up with the low spot on the rim. I am also surprised at how little wheel weights were on my rims now. This is how a proper balance is achieved and the ride is made silky smooth.

I'm sorry about the long rant but the moral of the story is that no two repair shops are created equal. This is especially true when it comes to a proper wheel balancing.

 

road force is very time consuming so even if the salesman wrote up a work order for it, the slack $8/hr workers in the back dont take the time. i had to fire a few of my employees when i worked in the business bc their idea of a rotation was them rubbing the wheels, leaving finger prints in the brake dust, but never even taking the wheels off the car.

ive worked at basically all the major tire chains, and discount tire is the only one i would recommend to others. but out of curiousity, what kind of tires do you have? oem wheels?

 

Yeah I've heard good things about Discount Tire. I've got Falken ZE-912 All-Season tires and the OEM 17 in rims.

 

On my last two tire purchases, I bought through Tirerack and made sure the installer/shop used a Hunter balancer. Worked out well. You can see the brand list in the Installer section of Tirerack.

 

Getting a good wheel balance is tough. I go to one shop about an hour away from me to have wheels and tires balanced. The owner does them right in front of me, uses a hunter balancer, uses almost no wheel weights as they are balanced so well, and only charges me $10 per wheel. But I always bring freshly cleaned wheels and new street or almost new track tires to save him time.

Another thing to watch out for is bad front wheel bearings. If you cannot get a good tire balance no matter what and you know for a fact your wheels and tires have no bubbles or warpage check the wheel bearings. Any slight wear on them will cause oscillations on the steering wheel at highway speeds. Also torque your wheels in a star pattern to the proper torque spec, no impact gun should be used to set the final torque setting.

I struggled for years to get rid of that dreaded 60~70 MPH 4th gen shimmy and eventially with good wheels/tires, fresh wheel bearings, proper wheel balancing, and installing the wheels myself made the problem go away.

 

Balancing has appeared to be a more significant issue over the past 5 or so years, at least to me. Even the past couple years I've had to have my summer tires balanced twice and had my winter tires balanced 4 times. Two of those were nothing more than screw ups! They had used lip weights onmy rims which were not designed to accept them. Had both my rear tires go flat on the highway. Oh, I called and they provided roadside service even though I didn't even buy my tires from them! I knew then what they had done. Short time later the rims were vibrating. They told me (assuming true) that with a wheel balancer you can balance the rim and tire as a whole or balance it by inside and outside. They had originally balanced the entire rim. Once they did the I/O balance, smooth as butter.

Never heard of a road force balance. Will look into that upon next tire purchase or need to have mine balanced.

 

This.
When I worked for a small muffler and brake shop we were allowed to use torque sticks on our impact wrenches. They seemed fairly accurate but when I started working at a local Honda dealership we had to set our impact wrench so low that it wasn't even close to the torque spec. Then we'd torque every lug nut by hand. People don't understand how easy it is to warp a rotor when over torquing with an impact wrench.

 

I guess the saying "You get what you pay for" holds true here, huh? I mean $20 versus $120? big difference.

Glad it worked out in the long run.

 

Balance them yourself! Get one of these babies. I get mine done for free since my friend has one in the shop.

http://www.hunter.com/balancer/roadforce/index.cfm

Too bad they cost like $12,000

 

If you see a ton of weights on the wheel. The original guys probably never even pulled off your original weights, re-checked it & re balanced it. We've got just a standard balancer at our shop and have never had a need for a road force balance. If you're doing it right (taking it to someone who knows what they're doing) they can balance it perfectly on a standard, nice tire balancer.

Thanks,

 

high speed balancing FTW and paired with nitrogen filling, low maintenance

 

A standard balancing machine can balance an egg, but would u expect it to roll well? There's a lot to a quality balance. I just got back from the discount tire close to me and all their balancing machines are the same, hunter gsp9200s.