Bad Head Shake. Help!

rclangelan

New member
Hi all, yesterday, I did two things to my 2010 Trail Edition:

1. Rotated my tires (35k miles on truck, I've rotated tires every 5k since I bought the truck, but this is the first rotation (5k) on my new 285/70/17 Revos.)

2. Installed TRD Cold Air Intake (followed instructions, install went smoothly)

Now, as soon as I hit 40 mph, I get bad steering wheel shake. It progressively gets worse as the speed increases. I took the truck back to Mr. Tire to see if they had gone out of balance. Mr. Tire had to rebalance 3 of the tires.

Now, I STILL get some shake at about 50 mph, not as bad, but definitely noticeable. Questions....

Could they still need another balance job?

Could an alignment issue cause similar symptoms?

Could the TRD Cold Air Intake cause similar symptoms?

Please advise, I'm at a loss.

Thanks,

- Ryan
 
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Could they still need another balance job?

Possibly... Road Force balancing is recommended.

Could an alignment issue cause similar symptoms?

No. Vibrations in the steering wheel is usually a tire/wheel out of balance.

Could the TRD Cold Air Intake cause similar symptoms?

No.
 
IMO (not a mechanic) its a tire out of balance, how did you rotate? I'm not suggesting that you did something wrong but I have heard of relatively new tires slipping belts when their direction was reversed. And old, possibly slightly misguided tire installer once told me that front to back was the only way tires should ever be rotated, as once they are heavily used in one direction reversing that can cause issues... grain of salt with that advice since it contradicts everything the manufacturer advises, but its worth considering.

Should be cheap (and awesome) to get them rebalanced, I'm a bit of a sucker for balancing and alignment though, I basically do that every chance I get, although 5K is pretty extreme even for me :)

My suggestion is take it to wherever you got your tires, they will probably do it for free or cheap, and might be able to check for a slipped belt or other tire damage as that seems most likely

Jealous of the TRD CAI
 
Last edited:
Thanks guys, yes, it was Mr. Tire who i bought the tires from initially. So I will call them back and have them look at them again.

And yes, they did charge me $50 for the balancing.

What is "Road Force Balancing?"

- Ryan
 
50$ !!! :wow:

Road Force balancing is a more awesome way to balance, it detects side to side movement so they can more accurately determine where to place the weights on the wheel, and also balances the tire under load (like 750 lbs of load i think) a lot of shops are using them now, but don't pay to have them installed somewhere that doesn't.
 
Slipping the tread was a problems in the early radial tires but is basically unheard of now, and I've never heard of it in bias ply tires. If this was the case you would feel it at lower speeds too as a portion of the tread shifts out of alignment with the rest of the tire. I saw this several times back in the 70's and can tell you you will feel it at lowered speeds, so the issue is likely to be the balance. Were the rims cleaned of all dried mud? I've seen tires get balances with mud in them and when they are mounted the vibration from the impact gun shakes the mud loose, which then falls off and throws the balance off.
 
Slipping the tread was a problems in the early radial tires but is basically unheard of now, and I've never heard of it in bias ply tires. If this was the case you would feel it at lower speeds too as a portion of the tread shifts out of alignment with the rest of the tire.

Seems like a reasonable explanation. I usually just do as per manufacturers instructions, but when odd things like this come up those ideas pop back into my head :)
 

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