i picked up new tires for the iroc and had them balanced at a local shop but above 125ish mph im starting to pick up a really good vibration in the car.

they balanced them on there spin balancer and have the normal clip on wieghts should i take them back and tell them they arent balanced well enough and or have them change to the stick on wieghts that go inside the rim ?

 

My experience with the stick on weights is not so good, so i just use the clip on ones now.

I have also experienced a vibration above 80 with the OEM steel driveshaft and over 100 with the OEM aluminum. You ever have that problem? Just curious...

 

ive never had an issue with the stock driveshafts ,never tried using an aluminum one though, any thing i ever needed a better driveshaft for id build my own out of 3 inch dom tubing

 

I didnt balance my bias ply drag wheels and was fine to 142 lol. My street wheels have been regularly balanced at a tire shop with stick on weights. No problems. New drag radials on my 19" wheels took alot more stick on weights but feels stable to 130 so far

Maybe you have a problem with the rims or tires or just something else in general?

 

im going to take them back and have them dbl check the balance, my old bridgestone tires didnt give me any vibrations and i had those up over 135.

so im wondering if a wieght didnt come off or is in the wrong spot

 

are you certain its a wheel/tire imbalance? how wide are your tires? take the wheel off the car and set it on a nice flat area, concrete. push the wheel slightly so it rolls very slow, if it starts to wobble side-to-side after a few feet then the belts are separating.

driveshaft imbalance will be very high frequency, if you are experiencing this, then try having the ds balanced or you can grab an aluminum driveshaft. aluminum wont vibrate nearly as much but thats only a bandaid. in my mustang i experience a very noticable vibration. pinion angle, a worn tailshaft bushing, and 3.55 gears all contributed. i found an aluminum ds and it cut the vibration in half compared to the steel one.

HTH

 

Find a shop that can perform a Road Force Balance to the tires. It will help dramatically as compared to the standard Hunter Balancer machines.

 

Are they sticking the weights on the outside too or just the inside?
Static (just the inside) will look better but you'll get bad vibrations, dynamic (clip ons on both sides) is best and sticky weights are a good compromise if you don't want those ugly things smacked onto the lip but still want a relatively smooth ride. If you can find a road force balance service in your area it's by far the best as mentioned above.

Other things- as mentioned above, check that the steel belts aren't separating/shifting and check the tires for flat spotting, and make sure that the wheels are torqued to spec in a star pattern and retorqued as needed. You might try rotating the tires (if they aren't staggered) to see if it is indeed a tire issue and try and pinpoint which one it is; also make sure that the suspension and steering components are in good shape and the wheels are in alignment. I have also seen issues of old valve stems or fix-a-flat in tires causing them to vibrate or not balance properly so you may even check that... unlikely, but it happens. (Regardless, Fix-a-Flat is pretty terrible stuff so I wouldn't recommend using it, makes your wheels and tires sticky, hard to balance, and some shops won't repair tires with that in them)

 

they have wieghts on both sides, nothing with the car has changed except the brand new tires, soon as im done eating im going to take the tires back over to the shop and have them rebalance them and see what happens

 

My driveshaft was balanced when I had it made.

As for my tires, I use an old school bubble balancer and put stick on weight on the inside. For high speed use, you should cover the stick on weights with duct tape to make sure they stay in place.

 

Lol duct tape fixes all

 

lol on the alky dragster we use ductape to tape on the wieghts on the rears even at 270+ mph they stay on

anyways i had the tires rebalanced this time the shop owner did it instead of the kid they have working there and no more problems. even took the car up as fast as i dared and all was good

i will say next upgrade on the car is deffinatly brakes stockers dont like stoping once u go over 130 lol

 

I worked at a tire shop for a few years. The cone needs to be in the ture centre of the wheel or the balance wont be right.

 

could you clarify this a bit? I just got new tires and just got them rebalanced and they are worse than before. i had this problem on a set before until they remembered that the coning is different than newer cars, i just don't remember what they said

 

By the cone, he means that when you balance a wheel and tire, you have a cone you stick into the center bore of the wheel. Tire stores have different size cones, for different size center bores. When they stick the cone in the center bore of the wheel, the cone should not go all the way through, yet it should not just smack the backside either. It should fit in the hole and be able to wiggle around just a little bit. This will allow the wheel to spin correctly when on the balancer. Yet, it is highly unlikely anyone in a tire store did this and didn't notice, as the wheel will hobble around on the balancer as though there is a bend in the wheel, and the person should be able to notice quickly.

Some aftermarket wheels do have center bores that the average cones tire stores use don't fit, so they have to use a different(less popular) cone, so I can see where this can be a possible issue but I still think it is unlikely. A lot of wheels like weld wheels and those of the sort can ask for a lot of weight if you do clip on weights on both sides(which for any type of racing is not recommended). They also can ask for a lot of weight if you use a clip on, on the back side of the wheel and tape weights on the inside. I found the best balance I got for my weld type wheels(Summit fast five wheels) was to static balance them, which is to just apply tape weights in the center of the wheel. This usually would move a wheel and tire asking for 4.50 oz to 1.25 oz or less. Also, if you have a vibration make sure you have the yellow dot mounted 180 from the valve stem as this is the light spot of the tire, and the red dot on the tire at the valve stem, as this is marked as the heavy spot of the tire and for the best balance should be located at the valve stem.

Also, I always use duct tape over the tape weights.

 

thank you for your reply it was very informative. but what should i tell the technician tomorrow because if i tell him there is still a vibration at highway speeds (worse than the day before when they were put on) he is just going to run them again on the balancer and they will probably still be out of balance. i get tired of going back and spending an hour there while they don't fix the problem. when i balanced my tires in high school auto class it wasn't that difficult i just want tires that aren't going to shake me like a martini

 

I would take them in there and watch them balance them, and see how much they come up being out of balance. Also, look at your wheels and see how much weight they put on there from before. If they have a lot of weight on the wheel ask them to flip the tire 180* and see if it will ask for less. If they balance them and they are not out of balance I would begin looking somewhere else for a vibration. Where exactly are you feeling the vibration and at what speeds?

 

last thursday I took my car back and talked to a guy that actually would listen to me and try to figure out why the tires aren't getting balanced correctly. we figured out they had to be back coned. the assistant manager was trying to tell me that the tires were fine and that it was probably something on my car causing the vibrations. i told him that the set that just came off was perfectly balanced and the vibrations didn't start till after the new tires were put on and nothing else on the car changed. after a while the guy came back and told me that they took my tires off my car and onto the balancer just to see where they were and found out that all the tires were off and one was an ounce out. as the assistant manager (a jerk) was handing me my keys after they were done he confirmed that they had to back cone all the tires and when they tried to front cone them they would come up different every time. so if anyone is having problems, that might help

 

That's odd. As I work at discount tire and we cone every single wheel from the back. It's very rare that we sometimes have to actually cone the wheel from the front and this is usually on trucks with large wheels and tires that it requires for you to cone them from the front of the wheel. Also, where was the wheel on the vehicle that was out of balance by an ounce? Did the re-balance fix your vibration issue?

 

they didn't say where the tire was but i would imagine it was in the back and the re-balance fixed the vibrations.

 

m/t mounted my latest set of slicks at the track. they balanced it on a cheapy bubble balancer with stick on weights and duct taped the weights on. no complaints.

 

Yeah I know plenty of people at the track who don't balance their rear wheels at all, and they have no issues. They are a lot faster than I am as well. I just don't like to risk anything especially since I can balance mine for free, lol.