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My 2003 Opel Agila steering wheel shakes and the car vibrates from 65-80mph, and I think it's because my wheels aren't balanced as I have had new tyres, tracking and wheel balancing about two months ago.

I went on the motorway today, and the car shakes and vibrates really badly at high speeds. I am convinced the garage didn't balance the wheels as they gave me a tracking printout, which shows the tracking is fine. I cannot take it back to the garage as I do not trust them after this is happening. I have not been doing any excessive driving, and my tyres were GoodYear Duragrips, which weren't exactly cheap.

I can't afford to go to a garage as the original one charged me £60 extra for wheel balancing and tracking (or wheel alignment), on top of the tyre price, as it doesn't come as standard when fitting new tyres - they also charged me £10 for 2 plastic valve caps, so go figure - I do not want to have to shell out another £60 for this repair. I need my car at the moment for work and things, so I cannot really go without my car.

Can I balance my wheels at home?

George
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4 Answers4

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One "at home" option is to use a manual wheel balancer like this model:

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These are normally used for people that want to balance their own trailer tires or for off-road vehicles, but in many cases you can do a good enough job to balance a car tire with one.

Of course, once you pay $70-$90 USD for the device and buy a set of wheel weights and take the time to remove the wheel, balance it and reinstall it on the car, you really have to want to do it yourself for this to make sense.

The tire shop should re-balance the tire if it hasn't been long since the tires were purchased. Aside from purposely taking off a wheel weight, there's nothing you can do to make the tire unbalanced. It almost has to be the shop's fault for not balancing it correctly, or not installing the weight properly.

JPhi1618
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No, you need a machine to balance wheels. If a wheel weight is off even a fraction of an inch it can throw off wheel balance.

What you can do is rotate the tires and see if your problem moves to the rear.

Ben
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I'd take it to a different garage if you don't trust the first one - and I wouldn't pay more than ~£5/wheel for balancing - but then I'd also never go to a garage that charged extra for it, the vast majority include it in the cost of fitting the new tyres. (I also refuse to go anywhere near one garage local to me after they charged me £2 extra for Nitrogen filling after I had a puncture repaired - not because of the cost, but because they didn't ask me first)

Tracking/Alignment is different, £60 sounds about normal for a full 4-wheel alignment, and extortionate if they just did the fronts...

Nick C
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I am wondering would this do any good: Lets assume we are balancing the right front wheel. Lets put the right wheel up on a stand, as if changing the tire. Turn on engine and the first gear. The differential should make sure only the raised wheel spins. Leave it running in idle and observe the wheel.

Any imbalance should show up as jumping/vibration. It can be measured with a stick, etc. It should be possible to figure out the lighter side. If so, we can put on a weight and repeat the procedure.

Other wheels can be rotated, of course.

I have not tried it myself (yet)

Nick Z

Nick_0117
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