Tire Balancing--Necessary?

I'll bet the person that told you that sells tires and fixes broken front end parts for the alignment...

LOL!

It will 'wear' them in all right and possibly totally destroy them while doing so.

Out of balance can cause a major amount of tire wear very fact. This vibration can and will destroy ball joints and tie rod ends, again 'very' fast if they aren't perfectly new.

Like a tie rod end that has a 'slight' bit of play to start which should be 'safe' for another 20K will get totally destroyed by the one trip with a tire vibrating.

This can then turn into a chain reaction we fondly call the 'death wobble'....

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

"T.B." wrote:

T.B. wrote in rec.autos.tech

Yes, you do need to balance them. All four of them. They are never perfectly made. All tires will be heavier at one point than the rest of the tire. Nor are your rims perfectly balanced. Any imbalance will cause a bad vibration at speed. And what does that mean? If your tires are 24 inches in diameter that works out to a circumfrance of 74.4 inches(the total distance around the outside of the tire, ignoring the fact that the tire flattens out somewhat where it touches the road. Which means that the tire rotates almost 852 times for every mile traveled. At 60 miles an hour your tire is turning at

852 revolutions per minute, or 14 times a second. That off balance is trying to pull the tire and shaft it's mounted on off center during all that time. The vibration will quickly wear out your suspension and steering, causing dangerous conditions. And it does not "wear in" over time, it will only get worse.

||i just purchased a new set of Kumho Road Venture HT for my 96 4runner and am ||going to get them installed today. I was wondering if it is necessary to ||pay the extra cash and get them computer balanced? I've heard that you ||don't necessarily have to do it and that if you go on a semi-long road trip ||after installing them, that this will "wear them in" the right way without ||the balancing. Anyone heard this as well? Comments...

Pure BS. Get the tires balanced. Personally, I don't buy the "lifetime balance". YMMV Rex in Fort Worth

Yes.

Make a note of where you heard that and never, ever believe anything they say. :)

-------------- Alex

That was a misconception that went back to my father's day. They used to run the car a couple hundred miles before balancing them. Was BS then, still BS.

(Remember that in those days, lots of people drove 45 mph on the highways. They could get by a little better at slow speeds, but if you're going to run at 70 and more, the balance issue gets more important.)

It may have had some basis.... the presumption that the mounting lubricant would allow the tire to rotate on the wheel if you hit the brakes really hard during the first few mumble mumble miles, or similar thoughts.

You are either very old or lived where the highways really sucked. I'm an old geezer and typical speeds on the mountain highways were well over 60 on the average, with cars that could break 100.

I'm in my 60's. We drove 40-41 Fords up until our first new car in 1953, possibly due to our economic situation and partly due to the absence of new cars during the war years. I doiubt these old cars would have hit 100 mph, and certainly wouldnt have been safe doing so.

I can't ever remember having a complete set of good tires on a car until I bought my own car. There were always two fairly good tires on the front and two crappolas on the back.

I dont look back on these years with great nostalgia.

Not balancing tires will cause them to wear out-of-round and ruin them. Not to mention the vibration.