3 Reasons to Invest in Professional Wheel Balancing Services

Think it might be time for a wheel balancing service? We can save you money. Today’s post highlights the top-3 reasons to invest in professional wheel balancing services instead of trying it on your own.

Professional Wheel Balancing is Essential For Road Safety

As time goes by, daily tread wear gradually alters how weight is distributed around the tire and wheel assembly. As this imbalance becomes more severe, you may begin to experience:

• Vehicle pulling to one side
• Uncomfortable vibration in the steering wheel and seat
• Rapid tire wear
• Squealing tires
• Crooked steering wheel while driving straight

Not only do these issues wear out your vehicle’s components, but they also make it harder to control on the road.

In order to keep your vehicle safe year-round, TIRECRAFT recommends investing in wheel balancing services every 12 months or 20,000km—whichever comes first!

Professional Wheel Balancing Services Save You Money

Not only do you save money in terms of reduced wear to tires and vehicle components, but balanced vehicles also enjoy greater fuel economy. Thus, the sooner you bring your wheels back in balance, the more you save on gas and overall car maintenance.

There’s A Lot That Can Go Wrong With DIY Wheel Balancing

For the vast majority of people, DIY wheel balancing is neither safe nor practical. That’s because proper wheel balancing requires:

• Knowledge of the mechanical parts of the wheel and vehicle overall (e.g. pin-plates, front and back cones)
• Wheel balancing skills and know-how (e.g. determining the offset, width, diameter, etc)
• Specialty equipment (i.e. computer balancer, also known as dynamic balancers or spin balancers)

The average wheel balancing service includes:

• Tire and wheel removal
• Mounting each wheel on a state-of-the-art balancing machine
• Spinning all four wheels to ensure wheel and tire weights are evenly balanced around the axle
• Detecting and locating balance issues
• Attaching lead weights (i.e. wheel weights) to compensate for imbalances
• Remounting tires and wheels

Think you’re up for all that?

In the “Information Age,” walkthroughs and tutorials are easily available online, but specialty equipment is non-negotiable. Dynamic balancers not only determine the presence and location of any imbalance, but also tell the mechanic the exact amount of counter weight needed to correct the imbalance.

But even if you’ve got the equipment and a few YouTube videos to guide you, there’s plenty that can go wrong. Some of the most common DIY wheel balancing mistakes include:

1. Using outside cones, which have a tendency to wobble and run-out with certain rims
2. Leaving residual static imbalances, which can cause the wheel to bounce up and down and lead to rapid tire wear
3. Leaving dynamic imbalances, which create dangerous wobbling once set in rotation
4. Using improper or second-hand wheel weights, which can fall off and bring you back to square-one
5. Ineffectively reducing radial run-out, creating an out-of-round condition that mimics static vibration
6. Incorrect mounting after the assembly has been balanced

Any of these errors can set you back even further than when you started. If you need assistance with your wheel balancing attempts, or you simply want to leave it to the professional, find a TIRECRAFT dealer near you.

Find A TIRECRAFT Wheel Balancing Expert Near Me

Use the Find a TIRECRAFT tool on our website to instantly find a wheel balancing expert near you.

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