Every now and then, I get something a bit different. Sometimes it’s a race car, sometimes it’s a funky, little electric tuner car, and sometimes it’s an off-road machine. This cool Jeep Cherokee belongs to Brian, and he came over tonight to diagnose a slightly shaky steering wheel between 65 and 70 miles per hour. Luckily, it was nothing serious — just your classic case of mis-balanced wheels/tires.
One-by-one, I removed each massive wheel and analyzed them on my Coats balancer. I hadn’t gone to the gym in years, but I don’t feel so guilty about that anymore.
Three of the wheels were only slightly off-balance (about 1.5-0.75 ounces) — not too bad. However, one of the wheels was missing all of its clipped-on weights, causing it to be off-balance by nearly 6.5 ounces. It’s likely that the weights were knocked off on an off-roading adventure, or perhaps they were never added in the first place. After re-balancing, it was smooth sailing (or driving) from there, and the shaky feeling at highway speed was no more.
