Today I had one of the two new tires for the front of my truck mounted & balanced. I won't let anyone touch my truck unless absolutely necessary because the "techs" here are generally stupid or on drugs or alcohol. Many are both stupid and on something, so I don't want anyone even changing a wheel as I've seen the things they screw up and had to fix them on customer cars. Anyway, I bring one wheel to a Tire Kingdom as I've installed the spare tire on the truck so no one has to touch the truck. I specifically state "I DO NOT WANT DYNAMIC BALANCE, JUST STATIC BALANCE THE WHEEL AND PUT THE WEIGHTS ON THE INSIDE LIP. I DO NOT WANT ANY WEIGHTS ON THE FRONT OF THE WHEEL." This pic is what I found when I got home. Do'h I shoulda checked at the shop because I do know the techs in shops here are really bad. Saw the front of the wheel at the shop with no weights and thought they did it correctly. Rest of the saga below the pic.
EDIT: I should have mentioned because many of you guys aren't tire techs who should know, but static balancing is done with just one set of weight to offset the imbalance while dynamic balancing also does side to side so there's often weights placed on the inside and outside of the wheel. Road force balancing is another thing that can also be done which takes into consideration hard sections of rubber, belts etc.. With static balancing there shouldn't be weights opposite of each other as seen in my wheel. Static balancing can be done with an old fashioned bubble balance like we did when I was a kid.
This is a 2000 F-350 dually I bought in '06. When I first got I looked at the spare which looked original and thought "well it's never been used, so although it's getting old it's just a spare for emergencies." and proceeded to drive the truck back and forth to FL from CT with a 24' enclosed while moving. Confident that I had a spare in case of any problem and a AAA card in my pocket I wouldn't think anything of driving through NYC down the Jersey pike through DC and what not, usually at night to avoid heavy traffic with such a big truck/trailer combo. Drive to drag strips, road courses, and land speed races all over the East coast, all while towing the enclosed with the bird in it.
Because of my tire problem this week I needed to use the spare. So I got out the special handle to lower the spare and to my surprise there was an anti theft socket required that fits into the tire winch way up under the bed in the back of the truck. Of course I didn't get the socket when I bought the truck so I had to disassemble the back of the truck to remove the anti theft device. So for you guys who've bought used trucks with spares mounted like this look way up in the tube for the spare tire handle with a good flashlight and make sure you don't have one of these anti theft things or you have the special socket. I'm lucky I never needed the spare out on the road! Spares 20 years old now so gonna swap it. Of course "While I'm doing this..... " always slows me down so I cleaned & painted the exhaust while I had the bumper and stuff out of the way.
