Does anyone know a good place in Southeast Michigan to have 35" BFG MT tires and wheels balanced. Went to Discount Tire and now the steering wheel wobble is worse than before I took it to them.

I've rotated the tires regularly...every 4,000 miles...tires have apprx. 12,000 miles on them.

I hear talk of doing a "static" balance.???

Any help is appreciated. Thx.

Jeremy

 

35" tires are next to impossible to balance. There is just so much tire and so little wheel plus the tire is flexible. Those dynamic balancers also suck to balance such a large tire. Everytime you spin it, it will come up with a different reading due to the huge rotating flexible mass. I found that the old fashion bubble balancer (static balancer) is the best for large tires like these. They will tell you if anything is severly off right away without spinning the tires. Then you can correct it by adding a weight and hoping it responds better when you drive.

Actually, I have found that with my truck I use no weights at all. I originally had a 2 ounce weight on both fronts and the truck shimmied slightly. I put them back on the bubble balancer and ended up ripping the weights off and it seemed to work best. I run 17" stock steel wheels though which respond better than the aluminum wheels.

As my last set of procomps wore down, I did get an offbalance on one of them that I couldn't correct on the bubble balancer. I ended up narrowing it down to my left front and just switched it with a rear tire/rim and the vibration went away. That worked until I had to replace the tires.

All in all, balancing 35s is still next to impossible. Take your truck to an old fashioned mom and pop garage and ask to balance the tires on a bubble balancer. Usually the mechanics that use these old tools are the best anyway and hopefully they will cure your shimmy.


kev

 

I had my 35" SSR's balanced the worst one took 7 ounces.I even had my 38's balanced on my Bronco,the worst ont took 40 ounces but it's a smooth ride now.

 

I wouldn't say that 35s are next to impossible to balance. It is harder than a small car tire, but it depends on the tire. The cheaper the tire the worse the construction and thus harder to balance. The same goes for agressiveness. The more the agressive the tire (ie Swampers) the harder they are. The ***** really like to screw things up. Bias plys are also difficult, but that can be said for any tire. I haven't had any trouble balancing my 35" MTRs using little weight. I typically used a dynamic balancer which worked fairly well for it. If you can find a shop that uses a road force balancer machine. They take into account many other things that cheaper machines don't. You also asked about static balancing. Static balancing places the weights on 1 side of the wheel, while dynamic balancing places the weights on both sides of the wheel. 99% of the wheels I balanced I do dynamic.