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Rotating tires, do I need balancing
- Thread starter lwrider
- Start date
This brings up an interesting question for me... is there anything "special" about Tesla tires/wheels that would inhibit a competent tire shop from doing this? I heard that Firestone has developed some capabilities to perform alignments on Tesla. What about smaller shops and tire replacements?
UncleCreepy
Member
One has nothing to do with the other. Unless you feel vibrations at higher speeds, there is no need to balance the tires.
This.. also the tires should have been balanced when they mounted them.
fholbert
Active Member
No, assuming you don’t have a balance issue now.
Watts_Up
Well-Known Member
Unless you had noticed any vibration, a new balencing is not needed.
However, check the thread depth with a gauge (outside left and right, and middle) for each tire
to check is there is any uneven tire wear showing that an alignment would be needed.
However, check the thread depth with a gauge (outside left and right, and middle) for each tire
to check is there is any uneven tire wear showing that an alignment would be needed.
fholbert
Active Member
There is nothing special with a Tesla.
They will also aggressively try to sell you new tires and wiper blades lol
The purpose of "balancing" a tire is that even though tires and wheels appear to be the same all the way around, there can be very small differences between the weight of one section of a wheel vs another section.
Imagine flipping a bicycle upside down and spinning the front wheel by hand. It spins nice and evenly. Now imagine attaching a brick to the side of that tire and spinning it again. It would "spin" more like a pendulum than a wheel, with uneven momentum. We might call this wheel "out of balance" because if you rotate it so that the brick is at the top, gravity will rotate the wheel back so that the brick is at the bottom.
In reality, car wheels aren't *perfectly* even in their weight around the hub, just like the bike tire/brick example... but not nearly as pronounced. This can be from manufacturing variances in either the rim or the tire, it can be from tire wear, rim damage, etc.
The symptom of driving with tires that are "out of balance" is that they won't spin smoothly. You might only notice this at higher speeds, and it might manifest as vibration or "wompy" sounding wheels... imagine that brick going around with the tire... "womp", "womp", "womp".
Having the tire shop "balance" your tires is the basic solution to this problem (but not the only one). What they do is put the tire on a machine that spins it really fast, and it measures how even the tire is.
To rectify an imbalance, the tire shop literally sticks a weight to the rim with double-sided tape. These weights are flat rectangular chunks of metal. Once you know what to look for, you'll probably notice some on your existing wheels.
Tesla's wheels and tires aren't different than other vehicles, so there's nothing special a shop needs to do to balance them... however since those balancing weights are just taped to the inside of the rim, and since Teslas have a *lot* of instant torque, it's probably easier in a Tesla to "throw" a weight off your rim by accelerating quickly. Perhaps a competent tire shop might stick them on better for an EV with so much torque.
Firestone, just like all shops that perform alignments, buy an alignment machine from a third-party like Hunter or John Bean. They attach something to each wheel, use lasers to measure the various wheel angles, and then make adjustments if any of those angles are "out of spec" for that given car and wheel.
They get alignment specs for tons of common vehicles with the alignment machine, but can also buy updates to the alignment machines that include the specs for newer cars.
I visited or called over 20 different tire shops to finally find one that had alignment specs for the Model 3. Multiple shops in my list were Firestone. At one Firestone location, the employee incorrectly told me that they can't do alignments on Tesla because of all the technology/cameras/safety systems.
Note that these alignment machines can typically also accept custom specs that the tech enters themselves, and that I brought the correct printed specs for the Model 3, but no shops (including Firestone) were comfortable touching my car.
On my Prius I used to do balancing and rotating at Costco twice a year... That was a waste of time... Never again.
Now, I just buy tires & wheels combo and throw them Winter/Summer. I don't have to worry until the tires are worn and need to be replaced. You are basically rotating your self as season changes.
Now, I just buy tires & wheels combo and throw them Winter/Summer. I don't have to worry until the tires are worn and need to be replaced. You are basically rotating your self as season changes.
When a tire wears down, especially one that is wearing unevenly, it can cause the wheel to go out of balance. Sometimes you may not even feel it, but it can put stresses on your components. I would not worry about it at 6K. Maybe later on in the tire life.
My understanding
(1) Any local qualified shops can do tires ROTATION and BALANCING. No need to go to Tesla shop. My non-Tesla cars got rotation and balancing at Costco Tire center every 6K miles
(2) Wheel alignment is a different story. Costco does not do wheel alignment - not at my local Costco. I NEVER have to do wheel alignment on my 1996 MB E-320
your thoughts? Pros
(1) Any local qualified shops can do tires ROTATION and BALANCING. No need to go to Tesla shop. My non-Tesla cars got rotation and balancing at Costco Tire center every 6K miles
(2) Wheel alignment is a different story. Costco does not do wheel alignment - not at my local Costco. I NEVER have to do wheel alignment on my 1996 MB E-320
your thoughts? Pros
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