Might be worth looking in your area for real commercial tire shops and skip the retail stores. Not all will play with the rubber we run but those that do will usually have a lot more experience dealing with tires that take extra effort to get right.
Arizona Rock Crawler
- Thread starter starkey480
- Start date
Might be worth looking in your area for real commercial tire shops and skip the retail stores. Not all will play with the rubber we run but those that do will usually have a lot more experience dealing with tires that take extra effort to get right.
I purchased my own tire equipment so I wouldn't be at the mercy of shitty chain stores and drugged up teens. Through trial and error I've gotten pretty good at balancing 37's. Some brands are better than others. Most instructional vids just say do what the machine says, but that never seems to work. I usually balance the back of the wheel first, with hammer on weights, then the front with stick on weights, and then fine tune the back again. Every time you add a weight to one side it changes the weight on the other side. I think adding a 1/4 - 1/2 pound of weight throws the machine off. So I "chase" a perfect balance. It takes a while, but even with very cheap equipment, I've been able to make most tires balance. I have no idea if this is the "right" way to do it, just something I've learned.
That being said, Starkey, you are surrounded by world class off road shops. Stop wasting your time at discount and go to any of those. They are used to working with tires much larger than 35's so they should be able to get you set up.
OP
Thanks for that! I called Letzroll and the answer I got seemed along the lines of “we can try but we basically just follow the machine as well”. I may try and swap in my spare again. The last balance I got they said the back left was really bad and required 13 OZ because it is out of round. They said if I was feeling anything then it’s probably being caused by the back left. I need more seat time to tell but I still think the fronts are a tad off still.
OP
Midarm linkys. Picked em up and they were like wow these are some short arms! Lol
Why? Letzroll is a local company for him, and he probably doesn't want a 4 link front for a Toyota
OP
He was just kidding. Rock slayer makes comically long arms in their suspension lol
OP
OP
2” diameter links are FAT. The left is the 2” lowers and the right is 1.5” uppers. 1.5” is the same diameter as the short arm lowers that savvy makes.
These pictures don't look too far away from where Jerry's old long arm pic was taken
Those are ridiculous, I wonder if we could outdo them and make the fronts and rears cross over somewhere 
OP
Drive my Jeep today to pickup the links. It rode so bad I hated driving it. Felt rough. Tires are frustrating. Come home and check psi on my tires and the tire that they said is the most out of round they out at 40 psi!! Every other tire was at 26 where I left them. Now it feels pleasant to drive again aside from my small steering wheel shimmy I’m getting sometimes. Crazy how one over inflated tire can ruin the ride completely.
downthepines
TJ Enthusiast
Mr. Bransford would like to have a word with the makers of these arms.............................
OP
Today was a victory. This was my 4th time getting my tires balanced in a week and they are finally good! In the past I had gotten some good balances at the discount tire by my old apartment. I did some digging and found the name of the guy who did some of my good balances. Figured out when he was working and took it to him this morning. Just a kid who drives a Cherokee on 35s. It wasn’t very busy in there this morning so I got to go hang out in the garage and work with him on the tires. This may not be realistic for everyone because we spent probably an hour working on it, but here is what we did:
We balanced all 5 tires.
Visually inspected the spin on each tire.
Moved the worst tire to the spare.
My tires have 2 problems. Some of them spin straight but are vertically out of round. Some of them were were nice and round, but had excessive lateral runout.
We picked the 2 tires with the least lateral runout and put those up front, even though one of them was fairly out of round.
We put the tires with the most lateral runout in the rear.
When we balanced the tires, if it didn’t look visually good, we would try multiple different balances and see which balance achieved the best looking spin. Some of them we static balanced, some of them were road forced. He put on weights and scraped them off and started over a bunch of times.
He also would fit the wheel back on my rig and make sure there was plenty of space between the weights and the bbk caliper. On one occasion it cleared, but not enough for comfort for him so he took it off, scraped the weights off and restarted.
I was so frustrated how shitty my rig felt with unbalanced tires. Especially with everyone at the tire places and off-road shop telling me that these tires would never ride smooth or that I must have a problem in my steering. Can’t thank this guy enough and I hope this helps someone else.
We balanced all 5 tires.
Visually inspected the spin on each tire.
Moved the worst tire to the spare.
My tires have 2 problems. Some of them spin straight but are vertically out of round. Some of them were were nice and round, but had excessive lateral runout.
We picked the 2 tires with the least lateral runout and put those up front, even though one of them was fairly out of round.
We put the tires with the most lateral runout in the rear.
When we balanced the tires, if it didn’t look visually good, we would try multiple different balances and see which balance achieved the best looking spin. Some of them we static balanced, some of them were road forced. He put on weights and scraped them off and started over a bunch of times.
He also would fit the wheel back on my rig and make sure there was plenty of space between the weights and the bbk caliper. On one occasion it cleared, but not enough for comfort for him so he took it off, scraped the weights off and restarted.
I was so frustrated how shitty my rig felt with unbalanced tires. Especially with everyone at the tire places and off-road shop telling me that these tires would never ride smooth or that I must have a problem in my steering. Can’t thank this guy enough and I hope this helps someone else.
Buy that guy a case of beer for giving a shit. Happy to hear you got it sorted!
OP
Garrett is taking him to a dinner and a movie.