Wheel balance/roundness

I have a long term issue that has plagued my Suburban for far too long. I can't seem to keep the wheels and tires in balance. I've had at least four sets of tires of varying brands (Goodyear, Michelin, Big-O and Dunlop) on the truck with the same results. Initial balance quality has varied. Some have been very smooth at first, others have been in and out of the tire shop, never to be balanced as well as I would like. All have had the same result later on. At about half the tread life, the tires seem to be square and vibrate badly at highway speeds. At this point, no amount of corrective balancing can address the problem.

I even changed the brake drums on the rear once to see if that would help (they are huge, 13" X 3" drums that are extremely heavy). Didn't make a difference.

I'm suspecting wheel rim roundness issues. I have swapped the spare rim that has seen very little service onto what seemed to be the most offensive location with no real change.

I will be checking runout of the rim (crudely) in both the radial and axial planes. If they are bad, what are my options?

Factory rims price out at nearly $350.00 a piece.

Any suggestions for things that I might have missed?:confused:

Ronniejoe, the best and longest-term balance I've ever gotten is with Dyna-beads. I have them in all 8 wheels/tires that I run on the DMax (4 mounted summers and 4 mounted winters). Balance started out smooth as glass and has stayed that way for a couple of years, apparently completely unaffected by wear or clogging with snow, ice or mud. 5 ounces of the little ceramic buggers in each tire and a filtering valve core and it's done.

Hmmm... Dyna beads. Never heard of them. Gonna have to do a little research.

Ronniejoe,

I have the exact same problem with my tires on my '96 Sub. I am on my 4th set of tires, and they all get progressively worse as more miles are on them. So far the worst were a set of Dunlops. After about 30K miles, it seemed like I was taking them in for re-balancing each month.

Since I do all my tire business with Discount Tire, I am suspecting either their balancing machine, or their Tech's.

I do have to rims that have a slight bend in them, but Discount says they can balance that out - not bent enough to replace.

If you find a solution, let us know.

I was up by Fort Wayne Tuesday night. We bought a used 2004 Honda CRF250R from a guy in Topeka, IN. We stopped and visited with a pastor friend of ours in FW on the way back.

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Originally Posted by ronniejoe

Hmmm... Dyna beads. Never heard of them. Gonna have to do a little research.

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Sold by innovative balancing

http://www.innovativebalancing.com/

Thanks. I've already read quite a bit about it. I also found, through searching, a thread on a Dodge site somewhere about a guy who had problems. I may be in the same boat.

He said that on two of his wheels, to balance them with static weights, there was signficantly more weight on one side of the rim or the other (inside to outside). I've looked at mine and have a similar situation. My problem may be primarily in the rims.

As I said before, I've checked on factory rims and they are outrageous from the dealer. Any suggestions for rims?

Run the wheels on a balancer w/o tires. Go straight to the horse's mouth.

ronniejoe,

I have been trying to find a set of the newer forged aluminum rims (off of a 2000+ 3/4 or 1 ton GMC), but can't find any reasonable locally. The boneyards that I talked to says they get ~$125 each for them, and sell them as soon as they get them. I know my imbalance is due to the rims also. I will be going up to Michigan (Flint) to visit my parents (dad just had a hip replace), so I'll check around up there for rims. Since the area is so depressed, I might luck out and get them for a song.

BTW - I notice on your sight you went to GMI. I couldn't find a sponsor, so ended up going to Michigan Tech (Farthest away from home as possible but still in state). I had quite a few friends that went to GMI. Good school, interesting part of town.

Take care,

RJ

I have seen a very similar situation on the Burbs we have owned over the years.
I have done almost the same things you have done in trying to correct the issue.

As the tires wear, especially on the front they tend to get odd cups andor dished areas and this leads to a great amount of the anoying rumble and vibration.

I finally started using a product called "Equal" in the Burb.

This is a plastic powder that is shot in through the valve stem.
The product is sold in the proper sized packets for the various tire sizes.

The stuff will spread out in the tire with centrifugal force and it will move to the spot that needs the weight and thus ballance the tire.

I have used this stuff on the big rig for years and love it.
I run huge super singles on the front of the Ghost (385-65 X 22.5)
I can run at 70 if I desire and the truck is a smooth as a Babies butt.

The nice thing is that as the tire wears the Equal moves to compensate for the changes in the ballance.

This stuff is as close to the best place for weights as is possible.

Ballancing down on the wheel (which can be a fair distance from the actual problem) leaves something to be desired.

Try Equal and see if it helps

Best

Robyn

I have to agree with Robin. Equal is magic. I didn't believe it would work, but our local truck repair shop uses it in anything bigger than a 14" wheel, exclusively, and it sure seems to do the trick.

Try these guys for factory takeoffs. I've had good luck dealing with them in the past.

Will 2001+ OEM PYO aluminum rims fit your burb? I was shopping for a set of OEM steel wheels to mount my snows year before last and couldn't find any anywhere, even at the dealers. I was in the local tire shop and got a set of 4 aluminum PYO takeoffs with lug nuts and hub covers for $64 each. There are a LOT of lifts and big tires here in SE Idaho, so there are a lot of takeoffs. Try calling a few of the tire outlets to see what they have - I was sure happy to get the deal that I stumbled onto.

What does PYO mean?

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Originally Posted by ronniejoe

What does PYO mean?

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That's the RPO of the 2000+ forged aluminum wheels. They are 16x6.5 8 lug. They fit nicely on earlier models, and look pretty nice. 2001/2002 M/Y wheels are Alcoa, and later wheels are from Hungary. I don't know if there is any functional difference, but I couldn't see any physical differences, and no one has complained about failures of either. There's a pic of the Alcoa label (from my wheel) in my sig. link.

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Originally Posted by ronniejoe

What does PYO mean?

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Yeah, sorry about that, it's the stock rim on nearly all the DuraMax trucks except for the very basic LS models, duallys (steel) and the new single rear wheel one-tons. Because they are only 6.5 wide for the standard 245 tires and don't support anything wider than a 285 well, they are takeoffs by the hundreds and a very good wheel if you want to say stock on the tire size (245R16) like I have.

Got my rims off of ebay. Went to get the 4 rims from the guy personally when I lived in Washington. You could check and see if anyone that is selling them on ebay lives locally, and would agree for local pickup.

A buddy of mine has a 02 HD 2500 Dmax that came with aluminum rims, when he went to put them back on this spring one had a 6" split in it at the bead, after seeing this rim I would be staying away from the factory wheels. These rims are only used in the summer and the truck only has 145000 Km on it
As soon as I figure out how to post a picture I will put them on TDP
Good luck
Ron

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Originally Posted by rhsub

A buddy of mine has a 02 HD 2500 Dmax that came with aluminum rims, when he went to put them back on this spring one had a 6" split in it at the bead, after seeing this rim I would be staying away from the factory wheels. These rims are only used in the summer and the truck only has 145000 Km on it
As soon as I figure out how to post a picture I will put them on TDP
Good luck
Ron

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That's a new one. I'd suspect the tire shop may have damaged it during a mounting, a mfg defect, or an overload situation. I surely wouldn't steer clear of them, because of this one incident, though. They are normally of very high quality. These wheels come in two flavors. The originals in 2001 and early 2002 were Alcoa. During 2002, IIRC, the mfg for the wheels was changed to "Made in Hungary", with no further mfg description. There's a pic of an Alcoa OEM label in my sig. link. If an Alcoa wheel did split, I'm sure they'd like to know about it. The Hungarians probably don't care.

That's pretty clearly a problem from dismounting a tire. The older style pneumatic tire changers have a grip/hook/catch type device that catches under the edge of the rim. This secures the arm of the machine for when the wedge (?) moves in and pushes down to break the tire bead off the rim. If this arm isn't positioned correctly, the catch will put severe stress on the rim (Don't ask me how I know...:() and can bend or break the rim.

I'm with RonnieJoe, that's an impact/push on the rim - not a "failure" which would never happen in a down and out direction without a powerful external force. I would steer away from that tire shop, not the rims. I have 8 in use for 6 years and have only heard of one that had a bona fide defect failure with a casting porosity issue in literally thousands that have been in use for 7 years.