Is this typical after a re-balancing?

sheik

sheik

New member
Brought the 4R in for a laundry list of things to check out before the warranty expires. One of them was a shimmy I experienced at highway speeds that comes and goes. The steering wheel shakes slightly, but you can't feel the whole vehicle vibrating.

Dealer investigated, says the balance is off, hmm, well it's been aligned and balanced more times this year than all of my previous cars combined (I won't go into that story).

Anyway, so I pick it up. Start driving it home, the shimmy is significantly worse than before. Significantly worse = steering shakes drastically, and you can feel it throughout the whole vehicle.

Call them up as I'm driving home, they want me to come in tomorrow morning. Fine, I can deal with that. When I get home I take a look at my wheels. 3 of the 4 have big scuffs where they removed the weights that were on there previously.

Is this normal? I mean it looks like someone drove a flathead screwdriver under the weight with a hammer, and then wrenched and pried on it to get it off. Or is this just how a wheel should look when a weight is removed and placed elsewhere on the wheel? Some of the marring looks like it would be normal, but there are other areas that definitely look like they were scraped. I always take extreme care to not screw up the finish of the wheels and they get cleaned and babied as much as the rest of the finish.

Should I be pissed? Would you?

IMAG0045.jpg


IMAG0046.jpg


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My take is they damaged your wheel. And I would demand a brand new replacement. I bet they carry insurance for employee caused damage. I would not let that just pass by.:sniper:
 
There will always be some level of damage from where a clip-on wheel weight was on the wheel, but that first pic looks like they really marred up the wheel when removing. There's a tool designed just for removing wheel weights without damaging the wheel. I doubt they used it on your wheels.

I'd go back and complain. See if they'll do anything for you.
 
There is another similar thread on this forum about wheels looking like this after weights being removed. I do not know how common the problem is but it does concern me because I need to bring my 07 in for balancing. I do not know about the 4G but my 98 was very difficult to balance and could only be done by the dealer. Several tire places tried and failed and even the dealer usually had to try more than once.
 
You can always ask them to switch to stick-on wheel weights. That won't solve the issue of the clip-on weights already in place, but it will prevent future issues with marring the wheels.

I actually have FJ Cruiser wheels on my 4Runner and they can only use stick-on wheel weights because there's no lip on the rim.
 
I'm surprised they didn't put the weights on the inside of the wheel to begin with on the limited.
 
sheik said:
I'm surprised they didn't put the weights on the inside of the wheel to begin with on the limited.
Click to expand...

All the 4Runner wheels have a lip to accept hammer on weights. Unless you specifically ask for stick on only, you're getting hammer on weights. You're going to get some small marks from the weight, but those look excessive. It looks like they used a weight for a steel wheel lip, which is typically a lot thinner, and tried to hammer it over the thicker 4runner lip.

Look at the lip on a wheel like this compared to yours. There is a type of weight from each one.

16blacksteel1.jpg
 
4GLimited said:
All the 4Runner wheels have a lip to accept hammer on weights. Unless you specifically ask for stick on only, you're getting hammer on weights. You're going to get some small marks from the weight, but those look excessive. It looks like they used a weight for a steel wheel lip, which is typically a lot thinner, and tried to hammer it over the thicker 4runner lip.

Look at the lip on a wheel like this compared to yours. There is a type of weight from each one.
Click to expand...


What he said.

Though, the difference between lip on a steel wheel and a Toyota wheel is VERY different, and as such the hook on the weight is very different. I can't imagine trying to hammer a steel wheel weight onto a Toyota/Honda wheel. That being said, I'm sure there's idiots out there who try.

There is usually some damage caused by the installation of hammer on weights, but it's usually just on the lip (towards the tire where the hook attaches), not on the wheel face. As stated, there's also a tool used to pull hammer weights off without damaging the wheel that is 99% effective. The damage I see in the OPs pics is excessive and abnormal damage to be caused by removing the weights. I'd be pissed.
 
hey saw your pics and read your post

i work at discount tire, also called americas tire on west coast,

anyways it is pretty normal when removing weights for it to scratch the wheel but not that bad, there is a specialized tool we use to pull them off the lip and the only marks it might leave is just dirt and debris that got in there and the difference in color b/c that was hidden from the sun for a few thousand miles. sometimes we might put a small light scratch on them, nothing big, but that is rediculous, i know toyota has to have the tool we have but seriously they must have put the wrong weights on it when they previously balanced it for you because there are 4 different types of lip weights, MC's, TW's, AL's, and then the ones for steelies. all 4 have differnt size clips to correctly attach the the correct wheel, some wont come close to going on, and some go on too easily, my guess is whoever balanced your wheels before put the worng clip on (one that was obviously too small of a clip for the lip) and they beat the hell outta it until the thing went on, (to put them on we use a plastic/rubber hammer so if you miss it wont damage the wheel.)

if i were you i would most definantly go to the place where you last got it balanced and tell them, you might definatley need some documentation, but that is pretty rediculous that they did that, you would think the guy that did it would realize that it didnt fit and would stop and ask his manager, (what we call the service coordinator) before continuing to ruin a customers wheels.

so sorry that this happened to you. but you should def try to get it fixed by taking it to wherever you last got it balanced and showing the evidance.

toyota should def have insurance for their workers for situations like this. we do, in fact today i broke a 120 dollar tpms sensor on a ford f-150, no biggy as i didnt have to pay for it and neither did the customer,(of course) but it was an easy error as it was a banded tpms that you cant see by looking at the valve stem, the guy who balanced your wheels has no excuse.

hope i could help you out and hope you can get it replaced
 
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I'm on my 3rd T4R with aluminum wheels and there are always some amount of marking from the weights. But I agree that yours are far more excessive than I've ever experienced.

Toyota truck wheels are very difficult to balance as they are (or at least were) lug centric in lieu of the more typical hub centric which results in lousey balancing unless the lug adapter is used on the balancing machine. Most shops don't attach it and attempt to perform the hub balancing since attaching and removing the adapter takes time and we've become a cheap, lazy society. I've had more issues with balancing on my 2nd and 3rd gen, such that I considered going domestic (yeah, it was that bad).

To prove my point to one shop that insisted I didn't need them to use the adapter, they performed the hub balance with a result of 0.0 and then I had them rotate the tire 180 degrees on the shaft of the balancer and then respin it. They expected "goose eggs" and it ended up showing over 1 ounce off.

There are a lot of threads on other forums about the Hunter balancing machine as the machine of choice.
 
Thank you for everyone's input. I go in today to have the balancing corrected and to inquire about the wheels.

While I expected some amount of corrosion on the wheels K.C., my photos show freshly marred metal beneath the finish in photo 1, and cleanly scraped paint on the other two. Photos 2 and 3 show some corrosion, while photo 1 does not.

The finish on all 3 of them look gouged where they took off the weight.
 
Back from the dealer.

Balancing is corrected.

And..

They are ordering FOUR new wheels for me.

:bigok:
 
sheik said:
Back from the dealer.

Balancing is corrected.

And..

They are ordering FOUR new wheels for me.

:bigok:
Click to expand...

Thats great to hear the dealer took care of the problem. There are always more horror stories about dealers than good ones.
 
sheik said:
Back from the dealer.

Balancing is corrected.

And..

They are ordering FOUR new wheels for me.

:bigok:
Click to expand...

That's great news! Always good to hear about the customer getting taken care of especially when there is a real problem.

And an additional note... love the avatar and so does Carl.... hahahaha
 
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