A million dollar question please!

Hello beautiful community, so I have 265/75/16s off-road tires which are 20% bigger than my factory ones 225/75/16s. the 265/75/16s make my steering wheel shake a lot when driving on highway speeds, but I have another set of 265/70/16s all season tires that don’t make this shake and they drive like butter smooth. considering the 265/70/16s are no big difference to 265/75/16s in terms of size. But I like the other ones better because they’re off road. Does having aggressive tires cause steering wobble ? Thanks

 

lol I luv you man you funny

 

Steering wheel shake on the bigger tires is probably due to out of balance tires in the front. Have you tried to have them re-balanced?

 

Get your tires balanced.

 

I mean they balanced it yesterday

 

Shop balanced it yesterday they told me

 

if the smaller tires are not shaking, but your bigger tires ARE shaking, the shop either a) didn't balance them properly, or b) a wheel weight fell off and now it needs to be re-balanced again.

 

I've had 265/75/16's on my truck for years. They ride just fine. It isn't the size. You just have tires that are not balanced. They may be defective and it may not be possible to balance THOSE tires.

Larger tires with aggressive tread can be harder to balance but 265/75/16's aren't particularly big. If you cannot get these to balance, you'll either have to live with it until you wear them out or replace them with new tires. 265/70/16's are the same width and about 1" shorter. Not a huge difference if you want to go to a little smaller.

 

Stock tires are not 225/75R16's (maybe on the 5 lug truck but absolutely not on the 6 lug)

265/75R16's are only 3.4% larger than the stock 265/70R16 / 265/65R17 or 245/75R16's found stock on the 6 lug trucks.

A competent tire shop should have no issue balancing a 265/75R16

 

Steering wobble has always been fixed for me by cleaning the caliper pins
I need to do my brakes again but no point right now

 

hey there, former tire guy here. Yeah, imbalanced, or defective tires.
Hit up a tractor tire shop, or offroad shop. if you got the tires within 30 days, most name brand manufacturers warranty for ride complaints within that window, so many tire shops do too. still worth an ask if you went offbrand.

On larger assemblies, I recall the hunter balancers struggling/changing their minds a lot.
You could also ask for a roadforce balance. Think that was what it was called. machine finds the light or heavy spot on the wheel (cant remember) tech chalks a mark and matches it to the light or heavy spot on the tire. If I recall, its the heavy point on the wheel, and it got lined up with the green or yellow dot on the tire, the light spot.

On good tires, you wind up with a great balance. On iffy tires, you might be able to offset their inconsistent density issues.

Only the first balance on a new set of tires benefits from the roadforce balance. Unless the tire gets removed, rotated on the wheel after the fact.. Like with a flat repair.. if you go that route and wind up needing a flat repair later, tell 'em to mark a line matching your wheel n tire before the repair is done..

Cool perk, you'll get a more experienced tech for that service.

 

It's possible the tires could be out of round. The machine could show them balanced, but if they're out of round no matter how many times they balance them they'll either shake the steering wheel or the seat if it the rears. It's rare, but many years ago I had this happen. It was a rear tire and the way the tire shop fixed it was with what they called a tire truing machine and I got to watch how they did it. The tire shop lifted the truck just enough to get the wheels off the concrete, started the truck, put it in gear, and rolled this machine with a cutter mounted on it up to the tire and removed just enough material until they an even cut all around. It worked. It really wasn't much of a machine, just something rolled up to the tire, set it on the floor, and guided a cutter that was moved across tire surface. I have never seen or heard of this being done since.