As some of you may know I recently purchased new tires; well I discovered a vibration that begins at around 65mph and gets worse with accleration. I can feel it in the seat and therefore suspected a rear wheel threw a weight or something. Upon visual inspection I find that the rear pssgr wheel has three huge weights on it while the rest just have one <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" /> red flags go up; and I take it into the tire shop. Before I went I armed myself with information. </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helv, Helvetica, Sans">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helv, Helvetica, Sans"> Most tire shops do "static" (up & down weight plane) as well as "dynamic" (side to side weight plane)balancing and that is it. There is also an imbalance called "force variance" which is an "out-of-round" and/or irregular compound of tread and/or sidewall. Any of which will cause vibration and irregular tread wear. In order to test for "force variation" a special machine is needed. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helv, Helvetica, Sans">The Firestone shop I went to didn't have one. But they went ahead and pulled the suspicious wheel and put it on their balancing machine and I stood by and watched the results. The technition kept getting varring results but felt that the problem was a bent rim. (basically defering all guilt) They don't have the equipment to test for out-of-round or bent rims it just appeared to be bent due to a visual inspection while on the "lathe" I looked for the "hop" in the rim and couldn't see one. I suggested they swap the suspect tire with the opposite tire (front driver) and check the balance. Which they agreed to do and concluded that the front driver tire mounted on the rear passenger rim also reguired heavy weighting. They once again tried to point out the bent rim. Then they proposed new aftermarket rims; I declined and asked them to do the best they could to make the wheel balanced, mount them on my truck and let me go get a second opinion. They did and that's where I'm at now. On the test drive home I found that the vibe isn't nearly as bad but still noticeable.
What do you guys/gals think?
Again sorry so long.
-Jared

<small>[ July 09, 2003, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: UteTroop ]</small>