Rollin20z
TJ Enthusiast
Your guess is as good as mine. He may not have known how to boil water but he could balance a wheel/tire though when it seemed no one else could. I guess that saying is "If YOU can't fix it then it must be defective"
Go to a reputable tire shop
- Thread starter gregc291
- Start date
Your guess is as good as mine. He may not have known how to boil water but he could balance a wheel/tire though when it seemed no one else could. I guess that saying is "If YOU can't fix it then it must be defective"
GorillaBiscuit
TJ Enthusiast
Yea... being a technician for almost 20 years I've seen this way too much, usually from new hires who say they know how to use the machine. I used to get so damn mad when people would balance tires, 99.9% percent of the time the guys using the machine never road force or check rim run out. They just put it on the generic "ok" mode and get it somewhat close. Only the old grumpy techs like me were the ones who did a right proper balance and always fixed the vibration come backs.
Dude I recently went to the local Firestone and paid about $90ish for a road force balance to try and get rid of a vibration that was driving me nuts. Went to pick up the truck and I could tell right away none of the beads were broken. Asked the advisor AND the tech why they didn’t have to break the beads and they had no idea what I was talking about. They said there’s no reason to break the beads and move the tire around on the rim. No idea how to even use the machine. After a talk w/ the manager he apologized and got a competent tech to get it right.
GorillaBiscuit
TJ Enthusiast
Yup! That sounds about right! They obviously have no clue on what a road force balance is! Every shop I've ever worked at, only one or two guys actually knew how to properly balance a tire and the rest of the shop either didn't care or didn't know. I can not tell you how many times I was balancing a set of tires and someone walks by and says " what the hell are you doing? What mode are you even in right now? You're supposed to spin it, and then it says OK."
I would immediately face palm and say "OK mode is come back mode! This is how you are supposed to do it! " I would stop and show them time after time exactly what I was doing, and almost every day I would be fixing vibration issue come backs. The service manager would hand me the RO and say "The customer has been here 3 times, can you just do whatever you do and fix it? " Face Palm.
Uggg.... I'm really sorry for the rant, but this subject is something I can relate with all too well. Balancing a set of tires is not hard to do, the problem in the shops I worked in was nobody really cared. I tried so many times to show them how.
I'm so glad I was able to retire! The B.S. was killing me. But, the only bad part about being retired now is that I have no one to balance MY tires! Lol