Trouble with balancing tires

[mick]

I bought a set of Nokian Outpost nAT's 275 70/18R less than a month ago. Discount mounted and balanced upon installation. I have since been back two more times for vibration in the steering wheel and noticing shaking/vibrations in the driver's seat and floor. Has anyone else experienced this with their Nokians? I still have a couple of weeks on the 30day exchange for them. I like how they perform other than the not balancing well.

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[sscarter]

I bought a set of Nokian Outpost nAT's 275 70/18R less than a month ago. Discount mounted and balanced upon installation. I have since been back two more times for vibration in the steering wheel and noticing shaking/vibrations in the driver's seat and floor. Has anyone else experienced this with their Nokians? I still have a couple of weeks on the 30day exchange for them. I like how they perform other than the not balancing well.

Might not be balancing as the issue. Could be defective tire(s).

 

[mick]

That's what I have been thinking also. I'll probably end up ordering another set and cross fingers on both hands that they will not be defective.

 

[Dr_Al]

Back in the day when I was really into 4 wheeling a friend bought a set of mud tires. I forget the brand but one of them just wouldn't balance right. After going around and around the tire shop finally said the truth. The tire was made poorly. To avoid throwing a new tire away the mfg does a process called shaving. It's where they try to remove some of the rubber to make the tire round. The tire shop showed us by measuring the tread depth. A new tire should have the same depth all the way around but one of the tires it varied. It wasn't much and by just looking you wouldn't notice it.

Of course when removing rubber you now create an imbalance that needs to be made up with more weights. Usually it can be done and the buyer never knows. But in come cases weights can't compensate. Heavy mud tires, I assume, will make the problem worse than your Nokians but I bet it happens to every tire brand. I also suspect that most people would never notice or if they did do anything about it. So it's a win for the tire brand.

 

[Derek]

I haven't had the best experiences at Discount Tire. Did they try road force balancing the tires? If so, what numbers did they see? That should give you an idea of which tires may be defective. At my local Discount Tire, they apparently don't do road force unless you ask for it (not sure why) and even then I had a hard time convincing them a set of tires were defective. Fortunately you do have the 30 day exchange period which is what I did when they couldn't balance two sets of Michelin Defenders (not sure why people like them so much as I think they are well below average).

 

[Gator 22]

I assume you are not running spacers.
did they rotate front to back?

 

[rwuest]

Has anyone rotated their tires before to verify the behavior changes? I have a new set of Pirellis giving me grief at 70 MPH. They've been balanced twice (not road force balanced). I was think of doing a rotation on one side, test 'em, then do the other side and test, to see which tire is actually giving me grief. Google Gemini also says there is something to do with the roof rack that Toyota knows about and has a known bulletin/fix for it. From Gemini:

"
4. The Trailhunter Roof Rack Check

Interestingly, several owners of the new 4th-Gen Tacoma and 6th-Gen 4Runner Trailhunters have reported a mysterious "vibration and dynamic shimmy" that starts strictly around 65–70 MPH. In many cases, it wasn't the tires at all—it was the OEM ARB roof rack catching high-speed wind, causing the entire roof skin and chassis to resonate, which feels exactly like a tire vibration through the seat and steering column. [1, 2]

• The Fix: Toyota has a known bulletin/fix for this where dealers remove the rack, apply specialized foam insulation dampening pads, and re-torque it to spec. To test this yourself, you can temporarily wrap the front crossbars of your rack in thick towels or painter's tape to alter the airflow and see if the 70 MPH shimmy changes. [1]

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