So let me start out by filling you in on how this may have started a couple months ago. A couple of months ago we had a good snow storm. Over a foot. It was frozen ontop but the trunk sunk through. I could make it through it but kept sliding back down one of the hills on the driveway. I let some air out of the tires and while it grabbed going up it also broke a bead on one of the rear tires. I'm pretty sure the wheel spun in the tire. I put my spare on and all was well. When I got out and to a buddies house we reseated the bead and filled the tire up with air. I didn't re balance it and put it back on the rear of the truck where it had been. I didn't think anything of it as it rode fine. That's why I didn't worry about having it balanced again.

Fast forward to now. I rotated my tires for the first time since that happened. The tire is now on the front. I notice right away that when doing anything over 50mph the truck shakes horribly. It's horrible around 55-60 but around 70 while it's still shaking pretty bad is not quite as bad. This is every time you go over 50 so it's not something that happens every once in a while.

My first thought was that maybe I need to have that tire balanced after all and am only feeling it now that it's on the front. I took it to a shop and asked to have it static balanced. They said it was calling for 20 oz of weight and if they just put it on one side of the wheel it wanted 40oz and that they thought something was going on with that tire. They balanced it the best they could.

Well, it didn't help any. So do I have an issue with this tire and am now only feeling it since it's on the front? Or do I have something else that could be going on? It shakes so bad I find it hard to believe a tire could make it shake that bad. You can see the steering wheel and hood and all just shaking side to side it's so bad. If you turn at all over 50 then it feels like the tires are jumping which I know they aren't. I have a pair of my old tires that are still decent to hopefully last until the others wear out. Should I just put these on or should I be looking for something else to be bad?

BTW the tires have 42k miles on them. 2 of them are in good shape still, 1 was used as the original got a side wall cut(this one is now almost worn out), and then this one that seems to be an issue. I'm thinking I could put my 2 old ones on there and hopefully try to run them until the back ones wear out or even get close. They still have quite a bit of tread on them actually. Way way above the wear marks. I'm hoping to get to 50k miles before changing the tires out but it may not happen.

 

you dont have death wobble..........you wanna feel death wobble come for a ride with me in my truck. sometimes i get it so bad it will NOT stop unless i stop the truck completely. make sure your toe alignment is ok if your front tires look like this..... |\ ..... or anythign similar in the slightest way they will fight eachother when turning and cause that feeling you have. turn your wheels straight. and take a tape measure and measure from front rim to front rim, on each side of axle (opposite sides of rim) and see if they are "close". that will give you a slight idea

 

sounds like a tire problem to me tho if it didnt happen until you rotated that bad tire to the front

 

Exactly what I was thinking. The alignment may not be perfect either as it's been a while since I've gotten it aligned. However, it's close enough that you can't see the tires bowed in or anything like that, and it doesn't pull.

 

might have a broken belt or two inside the tire

 

I agree--it's not the death wobble. With the death wooble you're cruising along and everything is fine then you hit the tinyest ripple in the road and all hell breaks loose.
Sounds like some broken belts in the tire. Don't put 20 oz of lead on a wheel to balance it. If the "old" tires are the same size, slap one of them on. I know some people try to change all four tires at the same time but it's been a long time since my truck has seen a full set of new tires (like when it rolled off the assembly line).

 

So anyway, I did get this fixed. It wasn't a bad wheel nor a bad tire. When I said before I didn't think anything got in there the day I busted the bead I was wrong. I didn't see anything in there but the tire was still on the wheel so I guess I didn't get that great of a look as I missed it. I have a fried at a shop. Not a tire shop but they have a tire machine. He let me use it and it sure beat the heck out of taking the tire off by hand in the driveway. I was 100% intending to put one of my older ones on as it's the same tire, same size, just cupped a little so it makes more noise. It still is very usable though. Anyway, when I start taking this tire off I got one side off and noticed the tire had a ton of water in it. The water was probably 3-4" deep if not deeper than that. All I can figure is that snow must have gotten inside the tire when the bead busted and I not have seen it. Then the snow melted into water and there was my problem. I guess I just didn't notice it much with it on the rear. I did think it shook a little but I figured that was due to the mud tires with that many miles on them.
I cleaned the water out of it and let it sit to dry out in the sun for a couple of hours. I then mounted it back up and I did have a shop go ahead and balance it for me. This time it took 4.75 oz of weight on the outside and 2.5oz of weight on the inside. It balanced out perfectly after adding weights.
I stuck it back on the truck and the truck rides like a car now. It's perfectly smooth at all speeds up to 70mph which is as fast as I went. I can't believe how smooth it is. I guess this tire even on the back made it shake some as it doesn't shake at all now.

When they balanced the tire I watched the wheel closely as did they and it didn't look to be bent at all as it spun perfectly straight as far as we could tell.

I'm just glad to have this fixed and for so cheap at that.

 

that's an LOL.