A word of caution when replacing tires!

[rudy1201]

I recently had new tires installed on my 06 tacoma prerunner trd sport at a firestone. I replaced the tires with the same Bridgestone Dueler HT 265/65/17 that were on it when I purchased my truck because the ride was great. After driving home from firestone The truck had a bad shimmy at 50+ MPH. I called the guy at Firestone and told something is just not right and its not a very smooth ride. He rebalanced the wheels and still no improvement. I then heard about road force balancing and thought to give it a try. I took it to another shop and had it done. It helped alot but still had vibration at highway speeds.
I then contacted the dealer and asked them if there were problems with balancing Tacoma alloy wheels, She explained to me that there is a tool called the Haweka adapter kit that must be used on Toyota 5 and 6 lug wheels to mount the wheel properly on the balancing machine. Without this adapter the wheel does not sit on the cone balancer properly causing inaccurate balancing.
Well Folks, Just drove home from the dealer after having the tires rebalanced for the fourth time and this time it was done right. Smooth ride, no shaking in the steering wheel and no vibration in the seat at highway speeds.
So if anyone out there needs new tires and you have the factory alloy 6 lug wheels make sure the shop doing it is using the Haweka adapter kit on their Balancer. It will save you a ton of problems.

[05Moose]

That's exactly why Toyota issued a TSB to use the adapter when balancing our tires.

[Jason.MZW20]

Interesting. I just had some BFG AT 265/75/16s installed and they got it right the first time. I'm gonna just assume they had the special tool because it's pretty smooth at all speeds.

[William1]

So that explains it. Tire Kingdom has never been able to get my tires balanced. Thanks for the information.