Tire Balancing

I had an encounter with death wobble the other day. I read a couple of posts that said it could be the tire balancing. I remember that one of my front tires was replaced about a month ago, DW started about that time.

I took off the tire and put on my spare (full size), no more DW. Took my tire to get balanced at a reputable shop by a friend of mine. Put on the tire and i'm getting the DW again.

Could the problem be the tire? That's really the only thing it could be.

Comments?

DW is only started by a bad tire or balance.
It happens though because something is worn out or your alignment is off.

A bad rim/tire combination (balance, out of round, etc) creates the vibration. DW is when that vibration is able to transfer across the axle, steering, trackbar, etc, to the other wheel and they get in harmony so that the wobble gets worse and worse.

So, that tire could be the start of your problems (you could put it on the back) but the fact that you can get DW with it shows that there is likely other issues with suspension, steering, joints, trackbar, etc, etc. that you should probably look into.

Michael

thanks for the replies, langer and 2x.

can you all explain why it's not happening when my full size spare is on?

that's why i think it's the actual tire.

i'm about to go see if i can get it replaced.

deuce.

If you run on a tire long enough without it being balanced properly it can cause the tire to become "choppy". It is even worse if you have that and the front end out of alignment.

When I say choppy what i mean is that if you look at the tire standing beside you Jeep, you will actually see that the tread looks wavey. If it real bad you will even be able to see what lugs are and are not contacting the road surface.

One thing I've noticed is that atleast my XJ is very sensitive to tire balancing. If the front tires are off by more than .25 ounce according to the balancing machine, the steering will be all over the place and pretty uncontrollable around 50-55 mph.

If the tire cannot be balanced good enough, the shop should be breaking the tire off the bead and rotating the tire 180* and then trying to balance it again. If turning it 180* helps by still not good enough, rotate it in smaller increments until its right.

As other people said, all this is now going through all of your steering parts, so check out everything. Track bars usually have to be replaced every 30K-40k miles one most Jeeps, even more often than that sometimes. Also check all the TRE's on the draglink and tie rod.

Hope that helps

By the way, what tires are you running? A 35" tire will be a lot harder to get balanced than a stock tire, and most balancing machines can't handle them very accurately.

you can use BB's to do it, heres a link to a website telling you how to do it, also helps for bead lock rims

http://xjnation.homestead.com/beadlocks.html

sorry for the newbness, but can someone explain how the bbs end up balancing the tire? I saw that guide once before, and just couldn't figure out how the bbs's end up on the right side of the tire to balance it.

Centrifical (sp?) force. BB's automatically go where they need too and if there is no place else they need to go, they end up going to a nuetral spot. If you search for things like BB's, golf balls, tire balancing, it will bring up a bunch of threads on it.

that's what I figured.

uvaldetxj said:

I had an encounter with death wobble the other day. I read a couple of posts that said it could be the tire balancing. I remember that one of my front tires was replaced about a month ago, DW started about that time.

I took off the tire and put on my spare (full size), no more DW. Took my tire to get balanced at a reputable shop by a friend of mine. Put on the tire and i'm getting the DW again.

Could the problem be the tire? That's really the only thing it could be.

Comments?

Click to expand...

did you only replace one tire up front?? if so this may be the cause of the dw tires need to have about the same tread on each axle, i found this out working for a scarpyard. i had to drive a truck that everytime that i would get a flat they would just have me find another tire in the yard and they couldnt fig out that was causing the dw.

Frankenjeep, all the tires are new.

I found out the problem, it was the rim. Apparently it's bent somewhere.

I moved the rim to the back. This is only temporary until I can save up for a set of 5.

Thanks everyone.