Veritas
New member
I got aftermarket wheels and tires and they were never properly balanced, I was dealing with a VERY violent steering wheel vibration for the past ~8 months and it was nearly unbearable. The store that I bought them from "tried" to rebalance them 3 separate times and NEVER was able to balance the wheels properly, the guys at performance wheel and tire are idiots. When the car was between 50-65 mph the steering wheel shake was very prominent. I have done a lot of searching on the forum but never found a good answer to this question, most of the responses were speculation, that were well....wrong.
So I asked a friend who is a mechanical engineer who works on cars extensively and he suggested exactly what the problem was and how to fix it and he was right. Almost ALL tire shops do single-plane or static wheel balancing where they just put weights on one section of the wheel with tape weights, typically on the inside of the wheel well. This is what causes the vibration in the steering wheel, because putting ALL of the weight on 1 section of the tire causes an imbalance, which you would think they would understand....
However static/single-plane balancing is old technology, the newer tire mounting machines do dual-plane or dynamic balancing, where a weight is placed on 2 separate sections of the tire to balance it properly. The tire runs on more than 1 axis, which is why static/single-plane balancing does not work and is the cheap easy method of choice for most shops. In dual-plane balancing the reblanace can be done with tape weights only or with the use of tape weights and clip on weights. The weights are typically placed on the inside and outside of the tire or in different locations on the inside of each tire. For example my dual-plane rebalance has tape weights and clip weights in different position, like a 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock position to properly balance the tire on 2 planes.
Now, I took my car to a discount tire and for $9 a tire, they rebalanced my tires as I requested with dual-plane/dynamic balancing while using a road force balancer. 30 minutes later my car was ready and I took it on the road and hit a top speed of 80mph(highway) while driving home, the steering wheel shake was almost completely gone, i would say that 90% of the problem is fixed, there is a slight/minor shake between 50-60 mph, but nothing like it used to be. The difference is incredible and the car drives sooo much better now.
So I have seen all types of threads on T4R telling you to look for specific machines or adapters, but if a shop does that and still does single plane balancing the problem will be there. If you have them do a dual-plane balance it will eliminate almost all of the shake in the steering wheel. I apologize that I can't offer a more technical explanation on this, but it has to do with the physics of a rotating object and this methodology is typically applied to racing wheels. I searched the net and came up with little to no information on dual-plane balancing, there were a couple of sites that had information on it, but nothing that is worth posting.
I have an 08 v6 SR5 4runner with most specs listed in my sig
If anyone else has this done and it fixes the problem please let us know!
Not the best pic, but this is my runner with Nitto's, (don't have them anymore):
So I asked a friend who is a mechanical engineer who works on cars extensively and he suggested exactly what the problem was and how to fix it and he was right. Almost ALL tire shops do single-plane or static wheel balancing where they just put weights on one section of the wheel with tape weights, typically on the inside of the wheel well. This is what causes the vibration in the steering wheel, because putting ALL of the weight on 1 section of the tire causes an imbalance, which you would think they would understand....
However static/single-plane balancing is old technology, the newer tire mounting machines do dual-plane or dynamic balancing, where a weight is placed on 2 separate sections of the tire to balance it properly. The tire runs on more than 1 axis, which is why static/single-plane balancing does not work and is the cheap easy method of choice for most shops. In dual-plane balancing the reblanace can be done with tape weights only or with the use of tape weights and clip on weights. The weights are typically placed on the inside and outside of the tire or in different locations on the inside of each tire. For example my dual-plane rebalance has tape weights and clip weights in different position, like a 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock position to properly balance the tire on 2 planes.
Now, I took my car to a discount tire and for $9 a tire, they rebalanced my tires as I requested with dual-plane/dynamic balancing while using a road force balancer. 30 minutes later my car was ready and I took it on the road and hit a top speed of 80mph(highway) while driving home, the steering wheel shake was almost completely gone, i would say that 90% of the problem is fixed, there is a slight/minor shake between 50-60 mph, but nothing like it used to be. The difference is incredible and the car drives sooo much better now.
So I have seen all types of threads on T4R telling you to look for specific machines or adapters, but if a shop does that and still does single plane balancing the problem will be there. If you have them do a dual-plane balance it will eliminate almost all of the shake in the steering wheel. I apologize that I can't offer a more technical explanation on this, but it has to do with the physics of a rotating object and this methodology is typically applied to racing wheels. I searched the net and came up with little to no information on dual-plane balancing, there were a couple of sites that had information on it, but nothing that is worth posting.
I have an 08 v6 SR5 4runner with most specs listed in my sig
If anyone else has this done and it fixes the problem please let us know!
Not the best pic, but this is my runner with Nitto's, (don't have them anymore):
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