- 60
- 129
- 33
- Location
- Anchorage, AK
Sorry for the delayed reply, it did get it mostly resolved (thankfully very simply!) and I've been busy putting some miles behind me for the last couple of days (in Canada now). Before swapping a front wheel for the spare, I tried changing tire pressures to see if that had any affect. I lowered them all to 65 psi and that didn't make much of a difference, so I pumped them all back up to 85 psi, and it went from feeling like a bucking bronco at certain speeds to just feeling like a slightly out of balance tire again, yay!?
I'm still not completely sure of the cause and I plan to tear my front wheels apart when I get home to investigate. My theory is that it is related to the balance beads clumping/not distributing correctly. The compressor I originally used to inflate the tires didn't have an air dryer and it was quite humid in Illinois, so a lot of moisture got into the tires. Maybe this caused the beads to clump up and throw the tire way out of balance? When I aired them back up it was in Wyoming, so maybe the dry air helped?
It was definitely wheel hop/vertical motion, there was very little if any shimmy to the steering wheel and it tracked straight down the highway, it was just bucking so much that I didn't feel safe driving it that way. There is still a small amount of hop at certain speeds, especially around 55 mph, but it just feels like a slightly unbalanced wheel and doesn't feel unsafe anymore. Once it gets up past 60, things smooth out and it is cruises along beautifully all the way up to 70.
This is my first time running balance beads, but their dynamic nature is the only reason I can think of why the tite balance would change so much depending on speed. On every other vehicle I've had, a tire was either out of balance or it wasn't, it didn't change depending on speed like these seem to.
I really appreciate all the suggestions and info from everyone, one of the reasons I decided to finally pull the trigger on this truck is because that I knew there was so much knowledge/technical support available from the people on this forum, thank you all!
I'm still not completely sure of the cause and I plan to tear my front wheels apart when I get home to investigate. My theory is that it is related to the balance beads clumping/not distributing correctly. The compressor I originally used to inflate the tires didn't have an air dryer and it was quite humid in Illinois, so a lot of moisture got into the tires. Maybe this caused the beads to clump up and throw the tire way out of balance? When I aired them back up it was in Wyoming, so maybe the dry air helped?
It was definitely wheel hop/vertical motion, there was very little if any shimmy to the steering wheel and it tracked straight down the highway, it was just bucking so much that I didn't feel safe driving it that way. There is still a small amount of hop at certain speeds, especially around 55 mph, but it just feels like a slightly unbalanced wheel and doesn't feel unsafe anymore. Once it gets up past 60, things smooth out and it is cruises along beautifully all the way up to 70.
This is my first time running balance beads, but their dynamic nature is the only reason I can think of why the tite balance would change so much depending on speed. On every other vehicle I've had, a tire was either out of balance or it wasn't, it didn't change depending on speed like these seem to.
I really appreciate all the suggestions and info from everyone, one of the reasons I decided to finally pull the trigger on this truck is because that I knew there was so much knowledge/technical support available from the people on this forum, thank you all!