07 chev Cobalt front end issues

Nate Nagel > wrote in
:

> Tegger wrote:

>>>
>>
>>
>> Bet they weren't bent at all. "Bent rim" is a favorite blame for tire
>> monkeys who don't know how to true tires properly.
>>
>
> I have in fact had a bent rim on a 944, and I put up with a nasty
> vibration at highway speed for several years until I bought some "known
> good" wheels and tires and started swapping them around myself. I lost
> track of how many shops sent me down the road and told me that there was
> nothing wrong with my car. I knew better because the car drove fine
> with the winter tire/wheel set installed.
>



I've had (and been shown) actual bent rims. I know what these look like. I
have been shown wheels with center hubs that are eccentric to the rim. I
have also been shown wheels with the rim (felloe?) welded slightly out of
plane with the center.

No wheel is perfect. And wheels get whacked all the time in service, which
makes them even less perfect. Tolerance for this imperfection is built-in
to the car. Automakers give runout tolerances for the wheel, both axially
and radially. SOME runout (around 1/16" max seems common) is EXPECTED. A
clueless or lazy tire man will show the customer the runout and declare
that the wheel is "bent" when in fact it is actually within spec.

Any tire man with his brain inflated to the correct spec will be able to
tell the difference between a bent wheel and one that's been badly made. He
will check this after unmounting the old tire, but BEFORE putting the new
one on.

And any tire man with a brain and proper training will be able to get a
tire to run true even if the wheel is not perfect, which it often is not.
And he does not need a sooper-dooper hi-tech Hunter road-force balancer to
do it.

I state again: Many tires are badly mounted. Many tire monkeys are inept
and poorly-trained. Most tire "vibrations" and "bent rims" are the fault of
poor mounting jobs.

The worst thing of all is the attitude of many garage bosses, who seem to
think tire mounting is a bottom-scraper job, one to be given to the
dumbest/newest/lowest-paid/worst-trained employee.


--
Tegger