Wheel Balance Issues

I've never been able to get a truly good balance on my wheels (as determined by seat-of-the-pants and measurable vibration in the cab). I presume the Taco uses a hubcentric system like almost every modern car does, so unless there's a manufacturing defect in the wheels I have, I can't imagine there's much of an issue on that front. The wheels are true and round. I've been through 3 sets of BFG KOIIs (the first and second sets had broken belts).

The guys at the tire shop love to tell me that the Tacos are just difficult to get a good balance out of due to the suspension, but that's utter nonsense; the wheel is the acting on the suspension; there's no two ways about that; suspension doesn't just oscillate without an external force applied, and the only thing that could do that is the input from an uneven road surface through the wheel assembly, or from the wheel rotation itself if balance is not achieved.

Just curious if there are any other folks out there experiencing this.

 

Are they road force balancing the tire/wheels? Using the correct adapter on the balancing machine?

 

Discount Tire only uses road force balance machines these days; whether they're being balanced to a tight enough tolerance to justify that road force balance capable machine is another matter. It also doesn't help that they like to put the wheel on the ground before they torque the lug nuts down (how they don't know that this will ensure the nuts aren't equally torqued is beyond me but...). I can't speak to what adaptor they use, but I'd think it'd be impossible to balance if the adaptor was too small (smaller diameter hub) and impossible to mount of too large. When I was in VA a few days ago someone with a 4Runner suggested to the crew that they use the finger adaptor because he'd heard the Toyotas weren't hub-centric (which would seem bizarre to me, but... who knows?). That did NOT improve things even though the wheels may well have registered as being balanced.

 

Hmmm, this is good stuff that I couldn't find using the site's search engine, but which googlin' pulled up (on this site). I can confirm there's a big 'ol issue with shops debating whether or not they're lug or hub centric. This thread pretty much answers that question. Groovy.

So then I looked at the wheels themselves, wondering what deltas were floating around concerning lug/hub compared to stock. I was interested in the Method MR312 wheels (though their weight is kind of killing that), and my truck currently wears the American Racing Wheel Ansen Offroad AR969. The OEM wheels for the 2nd Gen trucks seem to share a center bore size (no surprise there) though have various diameters (at least 16 and 17" options).

The Method 312 only has a 71.5mm center bore, so I'm not sure how you'd mount those without an adaptor to step down the size, which would increase the moment load on the axle. That could be an oversight on the website data though, so I'll take that with a grain of salt, particularly since the first place I saw these in person was at the Toyota dealership where I bought my truck.

The American Racing Ansens have a 106 bore. That may be rounded down for convenience on their site, and I hope so; if not this could very well be the source of the trouble.

The OEM specs state that there's a 106.1 center bore, so just ever so slightly larger than then American Racing and much bigger than the Methods. I may call Method and ARW to verify their data.

So, my thoughts on what's happening: The tire shop may well not be getting the wheel to slide over the hub lip, OR they can get it to do so, but only because a plastic deformation has occurred during the initial (or early) installs. I know they've cranked the absolute shit out of the lugs with an air tool; enough to snap two, and also cross thread another two; why would the over-torquing happen? Well when I was a man of many fewer years, I realized it was easier to force things together than to take a moment to see what the real issue was, and I suspect that's at least one possible answer for the kids working in the bays for what must be something like minimum wage.

Of course, broken belts in the tires, some slop that's been pounded into the wheels themselves through improper install, or improper lug torquing could also contribute heavily to this.

The bad part is that I just don't know where to start. The shop just doesn't seem to be able (or even willing) to dig into this.

 

How many times have you been back to that tire shop? And just because they have road force balancer doesn’t mean they’re using that feature.. it can be turned off just by tapping on the screen.. which most places (in my area at least) do to save time.. do they actually measure the run out on the wheel and break the tire down and spin it to get a better balance? given the issues with the lugs I’d recommend going to a different tire store..

 

Multiple shops... With that said while the last time left me with a bad vibration, the time before was the best balance ever. Unfortunately, and for reasons I don't know, it was very short lived. The last time they did a tire rotation as well, which probably didn't help any.