Balancing Matters!

[aidanahunter]

Thought this would be a good topic for my first post. In the past year, I've been having issues with my Mark shaking at freeway speeds. The vibrations would be in the wheel while cruising, entire vehicle at times, in the pedal and wheel while braking, all at different times. Sometimes they were there, sometimes they weren't at all. I could never figure out what the heck was wrong since all of these vibrations were so intermittent. I had the wheels balanced. Three times at different belle tire locations since they'll do it for free (I bought Michellin Primacy tires there two years ago - would recommend them to any Mark owner who simply uses their car for driving). I replaced my rotors - nothing. I had the dealer closely examine the front end for anything wrong - nothing. They had the car for a week and recommended a teardown of all four wheels to check for defects in the tires and wheels. At this point I'm thinking great, I'm gonna have to drop a bunch of money on new tires and wheels or this car is just eternally shaky on the freeway. I took the car to belle tire one last time and told them what the dealer told me. Turns out all they had to do was balance the wheels properly. The guy told me they "used their BEST tire balancing method." The car is now smooth as ever - even the brakes don't shake anymore.

My first thought is: "Why the F*** didn't you do this the FIRST time? Or the other two times?!?!" So, all this time and money spent trying to figure out a vibration over the course of a year only to find out that my wheels needed to be balanced properly. Unbelievable. I am now forever going to be "that pain-in-the-@$$ customer" that won't shut up about how their wheels need to be balanced perfectly. Anybody else ever had this issue?

Aidan

 

[budpytko]

Anytime you want your wheels balanced, tell them you want a FORCE BALANCE done. That's prob what they did to get it right. They don't do it the first time because it costs more to do. It was the new tires that started it to begin with. My Michelin's did the same thing. I had the HydroEdge tires. They are the only tires I could run and not hydroplane in the rain.

Expensive tires too.... after I first ran them I told them if they couldn't balance them to take 'em back. They did a force balance and that fixed it.

Another prob MAY be is the driveshaft. What year is your car? Only the '93 had a solid driveshaft.

 

[aidanahunter]

Mine's a '97. I actually bought a '93 drive shaft awhile back and had it balanced but ended up selling it because I didn't feel like dealing with the install. The car is much smoother than it used to be and I'm happy with its performance.

 

[tbirddmnd]

I'm glad I read this, I had no idea that a FORCE BALANCE even existed. I need to get new tires, I really want 18x9 chrome Saleen Speedstars but after figuring in rims and tires it's too much for me to spend right now. I might go with 245-50-16 to replace the stock size on there now. I'll ask for the force balance if I have problems.

 

[SCTBIRD1173]

Road force balancing machines are quite expensive so you may not have an easy time finding a shop that has one. Try this link out below for some assistance.

http://www.gsp9700.com/search/findgsp9700.cfm

 

[budpytko]

I was lucky, my L/M dealer had one. That's also where I bought the tires but as they were "new", they only bubble balanced them the first time. Guess they never road tested the car either. At 60MPH the car was bouncing all over the road!

 

[Countryboy96]

Force balancing was a requirement for heavier vehicles when I was a tech a few years back at the local Ford dealer. And whenever somebody came in saying they just had a balance and the car still shook, the service manager always told us to "force" it, and unless the issue was something besides balance, it always fixed the problem.

 

[svtlincoln]

Every Ford dealership around here has a road force balance machine. When I was working for a Lincoln dealership we were supposed to road force balance EVERY wheel and tire. Did we? No. It's pretty simple to tell when a wheel and tire need to be road forced. The reason they didn't road force balance your wheels and tires the first time is because 1st it's more expensive to you, 2nd it can be a pain in the rear to do. You usually end up having to spin the wheel and tire, mark the tire and wheel, break the tire and wheel back down and match up the marks, then re road force it to make sure and then do a standard balance.

 

[Countryboy96]

Precisely what svt stated. If the balance that was done right took longer than the ones before it (like twice as long, maybe more), they force balanced them for sure. Techs hate to do these as it's a lot more work than just using the spin balancer, but same salary as far as they are concerned. Just like we hate Fix a Flat, it makes you do more work, deal with nasty stuff, back up the rotation, and not make more money just to fix a freaking TIRE!

 

[topher5150]

I have a question...I recently had my tires balanced and had to take them off to get into the wheel well, and now they are shaking again. Would this be a balance issue or just need to get them re-snugged

 

[driller]

I have a question...I recently had my tires balanced and had to take them off to get into the wheel well, and now they are shaking again. Would this be a balance issue or just need to get them re-snugged

I believe from the factory the hub, rotor and wheel assembly were balanced as an assembly. There would be a mark on one of the studs and the wheel was placed on a certain way. If the alignment marks were not kept aligned, there were balance issues.

I doubt this is your problem though and I suspect you may have not tightened the lug nuts according to spec. Are they factory wheels?

 

[topher5150]

I believe from the factory the hub, rotor and wheel assembly were balanced as an assembly. There would be a mark on one of the studs and the wheel was placed on a certain way. If the alignment marks were not kept aligned, there were balance issues.

I doubt this is your problem though and I suspect you may have not tightened the lug nuts according to spec. Are they factory wheels?

After market rims, but I do have rings on the front and the back. I took it back to Discount Tire last night told them that I brought it in a while ago for balance and rotation, and now it's shaking again. They rebalanced it again and said they said the tires were off any where from 0.5oz- 1.5oz. Drove it to work this morning and much better.

 

[driller]

Balancing aftermarket wheels with hub rings can be a royal pain.

 

[LSC HUNTER]

I actually work as a machinist manufacturing aluminum wheels from 1985 to 1990. We made many different wheels for the big three of the time but I do remember making what was called the Mark Flex, it was the wheel for the Mark VII. These were such a pain to make as the tolerances were crazy for mass production as well as the indroduction of SPC making our control limits even tighter.

The thing is on these wheels they started with the offset pilot bore, we had to offset the bore of the wheel towards the valve stem hole to help counter balance the weight differences in the wheel itself as well as the overlap in the rubber once they mounted it. I would assume that they continued with this practice later on as well as other car manufacturers started with this practice as well. What a pain it was to clock wheels on the fixtures so you could either finish the bore or drill the valve stem hole, but I was told it worked. 5 though did not seem much but hey I was not an engineer.

 

[svtlincoln]

After market rims, but I do have rings on the front and the back. I took it back to Discount Tire last night told them that I brought it in a while ago for balance and rotation, and now it's shaking again. They rebalanced it again and said they said the tires were off any where from 0.5oz- 1.5oz. Drove it to work this morning and much better.

Makes me wonder if their machine is properly calibrated. If you keep having issues with your aftermarket wheels you can always find a shop that does on car balancing. It can be difficult to find somewhere that does it but most tire/rim shops that sale 20" plus wheels should be able to do it.

 

[Countryboy96]

I have a question...I recently had my tires balanced and had to take them off to get into the wheel well, and now they are shaking again. Would this be a balance issue or just need to get them re-snugged

Usually when you simply take the wheels off that should have no effect on the balance. Keep in mind, when they balance your tires, they do not do so on the car like an alignment, they do it on a machine and then put the wheels back on your car. So if right before you took the wheels off they rode good, it's most likely not your tire balance.

When you said rings, did you mean hub rings (little plastic rings the size of the hole in the middle of the wheel), or metal spacer rings?

If you meant spacer rings, Driller is 100% right. I think those are what he meant, not hub rings.

Take your wheels off and, using sandpaper, go over your hubs real good as well as the mounting surfaces of your wheels. If you can have the place that balanced your tires do it for free (they will have an air powered brush, like we did back at the dealer, that will do a better job quicker). 10 to 1, this will fix the problem. And if not, grab some cheap plastic hub rings (fit into the hole in the midde of rims), and you'll be good to go.

 

[Icarus]

Road force balancing is great, but the machines are still only as good as the techs using them...
They can 'cheat' by setting blind weight high and make it look to the customer it's all good, or as you read here alot of shops don't bother doing it unless theres a problem. They charge more to do it, so they should do it from the get-go...

 

[aidanahunter]

A quick update: When I had the car at the dealer and they supposedly closely examined the front end for a week, they didn't notice one thing: my upper control arms were shot. Jeremi and I replaced them sometime back near Christmas and this surprisingly helped smooth out the car a great deal. Though the car was much smoother after Belle Tire properly balanced the tires, it was never perfect and replacing the upper control arms seemed to bring it up to as near perfect as possible. So to anybody having issues with steering wheel vibration, be sure to check out your upper control arms in addition to balancing the wheels.

 

[Sierra3]

great post

I didnt know about force balancing either. All i have ever gotten done was high speed lazer balancing on the spin machine. I'll look into this and ask if i experience vibration issues in the future. Id pay extra no problem if i knew it would fix it right the first time.
Cant stand the take the money and push them out the back door mentality of dealers, quick talkers at some places. If i am paying them, they had better take their time and do it right the first time, and dont give me a quickie.
I agree with your frustration. Thanks for the post and everyone that posted info on the differances between the two balance processes afterwards.