Maybe it's a freak coincidence, but I recently discovered that I had thrown wheel weights off two different wheels at roughly the same time.
I had been driving around on 21" arachnids, mounted and balanced by my local service center for about 5,000 miles when I began to notice a shimmy while breaking from highway speeds. The shimmy was very similar to warped rotors and was coming through the steering wheel. The shimmy was more pronounced on fresh asphalt, which I found a bit odd.
Over the weekend I decided to pull the wheels and take a look. I pull the drivers side front wheel to find the remains of sticky tape and no wheel weight. A visual inspection shows that the passenger rear wheel also threw it's wheel weights. I took the opportunity to switch back to 19" wheels and plan to take the 21"s to a tire shop for re-balancing. Driving around on 19"s now, the car feels much more planted on the road. I can still feel a bit of shimmy on braking which might be an affect from added stress of an unbalanced wheel.
In 20 years and 9 different vehicles, I have never thrown a wheel weight. Even when performance driving on road courses. I'm not assigning blame, it just seems odd to me to throw weights off two wheels at nearly the same time. The wheels/tires themselves do not have any damage, nor have I hit any potholes.
If you think your rotors are warping, check to see if you have lost wheel weights.
I had been driving around on 21" arachnids, mounted and balanced by my local service center for about 5,000 miles when I began to notice a shimmy while breaking from highway speeds. The shimmy was very similar to warped rotors and was coming through the steering wheel. The shimmy was more pronounced on fresh asphalt, which I found a bit odd.
Over the weekend I decided to pull the wheels and take a look. I pull the drivers side front wheel to find the remains of sticky tape and no wheel weight. A visual inspection shows that the passenger rear wheel also threw it's wheel weights. I took the opportunity to switch back to 19" wheels and plan to take the 21"s to a tire shop for re-balancing. Driving around on 19"s now, the car feels much more planted on the road. I can still feel a bit of shimmy on braking which might be an affect from added stress of an unbalanced wheel.
In 20 years and 9 different vehicles, I have never thrown a wheel weight. Even when performance driving on road courses. I'm not assigning blame, it just seems odd to me to throw weights off two wheels at nearly the same time. The wheels/tires themselves do not have any damage, nor have I hit any potholes.
If you think your rotors are warping, check to see if you have lost wheel weights.
