Tire Balance Issues, Need some help

About 5000 miles ago i bought new wheels and brand new 35x12.50R15 BFG All Terrain K/O tires. Had them installed and balanced. After the work was done, one of the techs came out and said that one of the rear tires was off a little (balance) and told me to keep that tire on the rear. When heading home, i noticed a slight bounce in the rear that would start at 50mph. I didn't think much of it, figured it was a balance issue that could be corrected with weights and i would wait till my 5000mile re-balance and rotation. So last week i went back up for my free balance (no rotation, i do that myself). I left the shop and upon reaching 50mph i still have that bounce in the rear and it feels worse then before. I can actually see the rear most part of the bed bouncing when keeping steady at 50mph. So i took it back today and told them that its still out of balance. They removed both rear wheels again and checked the balance and took it for a test drive. The salesmen came in and told me that the rear is perfectly balanced according to there machine, but the bounce is still there... He said the tech seems to think that one of my shocks is bad in the rear? There brand new shocks in the rear (bilstiens). Sure enough on my way home, the bounce is still there unchanged... To confirm the problem i rotated my tires today and took it for a test drive. The bounce is still there and still in the rear and i feel a slight pulsation in the steering wheel???? . I did some research and found that there are high and low spots on every tire and there location is indicated with a red mark on the sidewall. Apparently that red dot should be in the same location as the valve stem on the wheel. I looked today and did notice that the red dots are not matched up to the valve stem location. Could this be the cause of the bounce, even if there perfectly balanced? Could it be possible that there balancing machine is not calibrated and that all my tires are unbalanced??? Should i have someone else balance them instead (dealership)?

 

find someone with a hunters 9000 machine most likely dealer, this machine will tell exactly were it is off balance.

 

Would u agree that its a tire/wheel issue tho? I plan on going to Toyota for this balance

 

Could be improperly torqued lugs, I've rarely seen a tire tech do the star pattern correctly.

 

Lugs are torqued properly, I rotated the tires and followed the star pattern.

 

$90.00 for a 4 wheel balance from Toyota... Damn

 

It could be an 'out-of-round' tire, a factory defect.

 

Im thinking that but wouldn't a wheel balancer pick that up? I mean if that was the case wouldn't they never be able to get my tires balanced?

Also is it possible to have all 4 tires bad? Reason I ask is because I rotated them and I still get a bounce in the rear

 

When you rotated them the 2nd time and felt a vibration in the steering wheel.....that could indicate the 'bad' tire /wheel is in the front. How do you rotate your tires? Have you thought about using the spare tire to swap out tires to see if you can narrow it down to one wheel/tire?

A wheel balancer won't necessarily pinpiont a defective tire or a slightly bent wheel. I knew a friend who balances tires ...after running the tires through the machine the first spin, he'll take the tire off and rotate it 180 degrees and put it back on the machine again. Sometimes he'll find even more spots that need weight.

I had a wheel on our Jeep that caused vibes at 60mph.... the wheel was 'out of round'/ (bent) by 1/8"

 

That mark on the tire is supposed to be 180deg out from valve stem. Not matched up with it. My last set of tires (Cooper at3) did the same thing. Bed bounce, steering wheel vibes, multiple places balancing and still there. Just put Hankooks on it and all vibes went away.

 

2 out of 4 of my duratracs were out of round. Had them trued at an alignment shop and they road perfect until I replaced years later.

 

Get some "balance beads".... If you still have vibrations at highway speeds then it is not a balance issue. Be careful though beads can void the warranty on some tires. I've used airsoft pellets in the past.

 

Did you try to get your tires road force balance? Not every shop can do that, they have to have the correct machine.

 

You'd need to research using them with TPMS.
I used EQUAL in our jeep on 35's. Stuff worked great! I know EQUAL won't work with TPMS. I'm not sure about the other stuff out there.

 

You might have a flat spot on the tires, it's not uncommon. Go some where that can do a road force balance on each tire. Here is some info. For you.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=40

 

I have only rotated them once (this weekend) since I bought the tires... They have less then 5000 miles on them. When I rotate my tires, both the rears fo straight up front and the fronts get crisscrossed to the back. Unfortunately I did not buy a spare tire for my tires are not a stock size. I have 35s. When I rotated them the bounce was still in the rear and I felt a slight vib in the steering wheel.

I spoke with a friend who works at Toyota and thankfully they have a machine there that will road force them. I made an appointment two weeks from now to get the work done. He seems to think that all of my tires are a little out of balance, and because there is barely any weight in the rear of our tacomas, the bounce is only really manifesting itself in the rear and not the front due to the extra weight in the front.

 

Didn't you say that the rear is still bouncing even with the tires moved up front?

Pretty much every tire can be balanced, it just depends on how many pounds of weight it takes. You can't balance a tire, spin it 180 and not have to rebalance it. Every tire has heavy and light spots, the same with every wheel. The entire point of 'balancing' them is to compensate for the heavy areas of the combination so that that they spin smoothly. If you balance, break the bead and move the tire, you just moved the heavy spot and have to add weight other places. Do it a 3rd time, and you'll add weight a third time. Keep doing it and eventually you'll have weights 360 degrees, and be out of balance still

Every now and then the heavy spot on a tire ends up on the same place as the heavy spot on the wheel and it takes a ton of weight to counter it. Then, you break the wheel down and do the 180 spin so the heavy spots aren't aligned and the wheel is easier to balance.

 

Yes sir

 

So what I'm seeing, is the tire was probably defect when going on originally, but they balanced the best they could and put it on anyway. Thinking, eh it'll workout. However, typically now that the wheel is improperly balanced the tread will wear unevenly on the tire, thus causing it to deform more. Then, when it is rebalanced later on, the cycle repeats itself.

Also, they could have originally done what was called counter-balancing, which means they put two sets of weights around the circumference of the wheel, this is an improper technique as typically the weights are put as one set near the rear of the well, and another set as far to the front as allowable on that rim. This could also cause the tire to "jump" and uneven wear patterns form and as stated above rebalancing only makes this worse down the road.

If any of this is confusing let me know and I can try to break it down more.

 

Road forcing would help since they're technically oversized