I searched and found a couple threads but most of them pretty old, any current good deals? I'll be calling around in the morning and will post the price results/ phone #s for all the places I talk to. Seems like Discount Tire may be a good bet... I appreciate any help!

10/5/2007 12:56:15 AM

Gowers Brake and Alignment, very cheap mounting and balancing, slightly more for 35's or bigger. They're small so they can get busy pretty quick during the day. One of the best around here. The old guy is fun to talk to, as well.

10/5/2007 1:40:28 AM

^^I happen to know a place in High Point, NC that's pretty darn cheap...

10/5/2007 8:46:22 AM

opinions on road force balancing? and anyone know how do approach a shop asking if they can do it? not just getting the answer "Sure! Of course!" get charged more, and then still have vibrations...

11/5/2007 12:11:08 PM

^ not necessary, dynamic balancing is good enough for anything on the street, crossroads exxon or gowers

11/5/2007 12:15:21 PM

ah, someone with the same year/model said i should get them force balanced.

11/5/2007 12:17:47 PM

55.00 for all 4 mounted balanced (dynamic) at this one place i randomly stopped by while out this morning.

89.99 from the audi dealership for road-force just got a reply back from email.


prolly just run up to the first place if it really isn't that big of an issue to have them force balanced...even so I've been reading that some tech's don't even know how to use the machine to it's fullest potential in the first place.

90 bucks didn't seem to terribly bad though, especially quoted from the dealer. I guess i'll just take my chances and if i get 100mph vibration i'll just put on my face and eventually get them redone.

[Edited on November 5, 2007 at 2:28 PM. Reason : g-vegas btw, not raleighwood]

11/5/2007 2:28:25 PM

i run 37x 12.50s static balanced well over 100 mph and it isnt all that bad

a decent tech can do all you'll ever need by dynamic balance if you have good tires, as long as you dont go to some quick lube place like slownig changes oil at

[Edited on November 5, 2007 at 2:49 PM. Reason : gowers on south sauders are great, they do my alignments and that says a lot]

11/5/2007 2:48:34 PM

i think slingblade has mentioned he'll offer a 10% tww discount at merchants.

i'll agree with 69. done right, the average person won't be able to tell a difference between dynamic and force balancing. imo, force balancing is only necessary and a noticeable difference IF:

1. you have a very nice, quiet, smooth riding luxury car.

2. you spend 95% of your time on the highway driving 70mph+.

3. you have tires that take a lot of weight dynamically or are otherwise hard to balance.

[Edited on November 5, 2007 at 2:56 PM. Reason : .]

11/5/2007 2:55:20 PM

i kind of regret not spending the extra 30 bucks, but i also wanted to go ahead and take care of it today rather than wait a week when the dealership had an opening.

dunno how your definition of luxury fares vs audi, but it's decently quiet and 80 usually feels like 60. every time i'm on the highway i have to be constantly self-aware not to speed.

all in all i guess, 60 OTD with two tires disposed of, and the best of the old tires getting remounted on my spare wheel isn't that horrible.

i'll have to find some smooth road tomorrow and see how it rides. the bit of 264 i felt like driving on afterwards was packed and it had already gotten dark.

was some place called pugh's tire, i figured mounting a tire was like child's play and it would be hard for any decent looking shop to screw that up.

11/5/2007 5:59:49 PM

where the hell is that at?

11/5/2007 9:20:09 PM

Discount Tire is a good deal. Buy your tires there and you get life-time rotate and rebalance for free. And we can do Road Force. If you got em from somewhere else, it will still be the quickest place to get it done and one of the cheapest.

11/6/2007 2:28:27 AM

i got them drop shipped from discount tire, as i said in one of my earlier edits im in greenville currently not raleigh

11/6/2007 11:06:37 AM

I found this online, very good explanation

Quote :

" All good comments so far. You have to remove the wheel and tire from the vehicle to have it road force balanced. What the machine does is spin the wheel/tire slowly while pressing a roller against the tread with about 1400 pounds of force. It measures the "loaded runout" of the wheel/tire combination. Then it measures, using other rollers, the runout of the wheel where the bead seats. Then it instructs the user to mark the tire and the wheel, remove them from the machine, break the beads loose, rotate the tires on the wheel to match the marks, then re-inflate and re-mount the wheel/tire on the machine. Then it spins it again to measure the results, then spins it up so balance weights can be applied in the usual manner. OK, now what's it REALLY doing? It models the wheel bead mounting surface as a circle that is not necessarily concentric with the rotational axis of the wheel. For the technically literate, that's the first order radial harmonic. It models the tire as a circle that's not necessarily concentric with its beads. It then computes how to mount the tire on the wheel so that the "high spot" of the tire is at the "low spot" of the wheel. Again for the technically literate, it puts the first order harmonic of the tire out of phase with the first order harmonic of the wheel such that they cancel as much as possible. What that does is minimize the net loaded radial runout of the wheel/tire combination. In layman's terms, it makes the tread surface, under load, as round as possible, relative to the axis of rotation of the wheel. Does it work? Absolutely. Very expensive machines are used to do the same thing with the tires and wheels that are mounted on new vehicles at the factory. The Hunter GSP9700 does it just as well and it does it in a tire shop. Ask Michelin -- their engineers bought the first six of them Hunter produced. You can road force balance wheels at any time. I've done it with my own tires at 50,000+ miles. Tires sometimes change their loaded runout with wear, and road force balancing can improve their performance."

[Edited on November 6, 2007 at 11:36 AM. Reason : .]

11/6/2007 11:33:30 AM

WTF, this place used clip-on weights on my wheels ?!?!!

this shit looks so tacky, why the fuck didn't i go to the dealership

11/6/2007 12:40:13 PM

Go to Duty Tire off of Tryon. Good deals and will use whatever weights you ask for.
Only $25 to mount two 255/30/19 total.

11/6/2007 1:16:12 PM

im not sure if i should return to this place, bitch them out (the owner was actually pretty chill, despite talking shit about ncsu as a unc alum) or just realize my stupidity and spend the original 90 at the dealership knowing it would be done right.

again, for the900th time, im stuck in greenville.

11/6/2007 1:22:04 PM

service manager @ audi said i could have them roadforce rebalanced with the hunter GSP9712 for 70 since the tires were already mounted.

11/6/2007 1:52:38 PM