If you’re a vehicle owner or buying a vehicle, then you probably heard about tire balancing. Tire/Wheel balancing is the highly recommended service. But most people don’t know why it is necessary?
Tire balancing is a service to check the balance of tires, proper adjustment of tire weight distribution, and wheel alignment for assuring the best performance for the long run. If you want to know complete details about tire balancing and why it is necessary, keep reading this article to know the most helpful information.
What is Tire Balancing?
Tire balancing is the service that’s also recommended in the services list of the vehicle’s owner’s manual. Tire balancing is primarily essential to retain efficient performance on the roads and make it long-lasting. Tire balancing also adjusts the weight distribution around the vehicle and hence gives a smooth riding experience.
Balancing Vs. Alignment
Wheel balancing and alignment are both considered very similar things, but they are not. Wheel alignment means fixing the angles of the tires so that both the tires travel in the same direction, and hence the contact between the tires and road will be good enough.
Why Do Tyres need balancing?
After a certain period of use, a tire loses its balance and needs a good tire balancing service to get back into its effective performance. Hence the balancing is required.
Wheel Balancing
Wheel balancing means adjusting the weight imbalances in a wheel/tire. If your wheels are imbalanced, it will give you a shaky and uneven ride experience. If these imbalances don’t get treated at the right time, you would need to change the entire tire, or it could become the cause of an accident.
When you take your vehicles to tire balancing, the technician first will dismount your wheels and bring those wheels onto the balancing machine. The machine will check the imbalances of the tires by spinning them at the highest speed. Then accordingly, the technician will mount the small wheel weights to the tires and wheel assembly and start fixing the wheel imbalance.
What Are The Signs Of The Out-of-Balance Tires?
If you get a slight imbalance, you will feel some disruption in the driving experience. To make sure your tires are out of balance, you can consider these points.
- Strange Vibrations: If you’re experiencing some unnecessary, quirky, and sudden vibrations, then it could probably be because of the tire imbalance. These vibrations will feel on the steering, and they are directly proportional to the car’s speed.
- Unusual Tread Wear: If your tire is imbalanced for a long time, it would undoubtedly have caused irregular patchy flat areas in the tires’ tread. Your tires would blow out. They look very weird in shape and sizes, and if it is left untreated for a longer time, you will lose the tread of the tires.
- Worn Suspension Components: That strange vibration will also affect the entire wheel and suspension system. Hence this will damage the bearings and shocks if the wheel and the responsiveness and control of the vehicle will also get affected. And if you ignore this problem for a while, you will also notice some strange noises from the bearings.
- Change in Gas Mileage: If your vehicle is consuming more oil with speed, your vehicle might have a wheel imbalance.
How often should you get it done?
No one can tell you the exact period when you should go for tire balancing. However, there are three primary factors to be considered before taking your vehicle to the tire balancing, and those factors are: How much do you drive the car? Second, what is the quality of tires? Finally, what is the quality of roads?
You would get the perfect idea from the vehicle’s owner’s manual. One of the ideal rules to take your vehicle on regular maintenance is after 12,000-15,000 miles. Or you can also go for maintenance once a year.