Why Is My Car Shaking?
Everyone has felt it, you jump on the freeway and as soon as you get up to speed the steering wheel starts to shake back and forth and never stops until you slow down There are a couple reasons that a car would shake when driving. Uneven tire wear, separating tires, and out of balance tires will all cause a shaking condition when driving. The shaking condition is usually noticed at higher speeds and will generally get worse the faster the vehicle goes. The most common problem that can cause a vehicle to shake is out of balance tires. Tires are balanced whenever they are replaced with new tires, however over time as the tire wears down the balance points change and the tire and wheel needs rebalanced to correct it.
How Are Tires Balanced?
We use a state of the art Hunter tire balancer, that allows us to simulate the tire actually driving on the road with its road force balancing program. This allows us to not only balance the tire but provides us with even better accuracy when balancing by simulating what the tires is doing while it is being driven down the road. The tire is installed onto the balancer and the balancer spins the tire at about 40 MPH. While the tire is spinning the balancer records the high and low spots of the tire and wheel assembly and then shoots a laser line where the weight should be installed. Once the weights are installed the tire is then spun once more to check that the weights have been properly installed.
How Often Should I balance My Tires?
There are two reasons why tires should be regularly balanced. One is obvious, no one likes to drive a vehicle that is constantly shaking. Reason two is unbalanced tires can actually cause uneven tire wear. When a tire isn’t properly balanced it can cause excessive wear in the center of the tire and makes it look like it has be bouncing across the road instead of staying flat and true when driving. Dickerson Automotive recommends balancing tires every 30,000 miles, doing this well keep the vehicle driving smoothly and also increase the life of the tire in the end. If you have tire balance questions or have a shaking condition happening when your driving do hesitate to give us a call!