Will someone please clear this up for me. I've searched threads and read a ton, but it's not clear if I need to use the hunter balancer and haweka adapter if I'm running tech 1 rockcrawler rims. I bought these rims a bit back and started reading about balancing tires on them.....it seems you need the hunter balancer and adapter for the stock rims because they are lugcentric, but do you need to use it for aftermarket rims like my tech ones. Please either point me to the thread that explains this or fill me in on the info. Thanks

 

you should because it isnt the rim thats lugcentric, its the mounting surface on the vehicle that used the wheel studs that center the placement of the rim to the axle....

my truck is a 4x2, and regularly balanced and never had any issues with it
but then again, my truck vibrates in general and i have mudders

 

so being lugcentric means that they used the lug studs as the actually center of the wheel off the end of the axle? I thought it was that they designed the wheels so the holes for the studs are the true center of the wheel......I think I'm just gonna use the hunter and haweka regardless. thanks jim...are there any other folks who'd like to comment?

 

It is the way the wheels attach to the vehicle than the way the wheel is made that matters. Wheels can be centered by the hub (hub-centric) or centered by the lug nuts (lug-centric). Most 2WD vehicles use hub-centric, that use a precisely machined center hub projection that mates to a similar hole in the back side of the wheel. THe lug nuts.bolts than just hold the wheel to the hub.

However, many 4WD vehicles have an over-sized hole in the wheel in order to easily slide over the front (and possibly rear) locking hubs. The front hubs vary in size, some are small, some are large, so the hole in the wheel must be large enough to clear the largest hub. So in this case, the lug nuts must both center the wheel on the hub and also hold it in place.

In a perfect word, the bolt hole circle is perfectly aligned with the hub circle and both are perfectly aligned with the wheel. But if there is any variation, then a normal wheel balancer that centers the hole in the wheel on a cone may not perfectly balance the wheel. I run a set of continuous wheel balancers on my '85:
http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...ce/index.shtml

 

my wheels use the lugs to center themselve, but that could be because i have ford explorer wheels on my truck..... it had some goofy centerlines on it before and their centerbore was huge, those used the lugs to center themselves as well.....

 

I called several tire shops here in the SF bay area and I can not find a tire shop that has Haweka adapter to balance our tires correctly. I read some postings on the other threads that all 4Runners and Tacomas have lugcentric rims, not the regular hub centric. Do you guys know of any tire shops in the SF bay area that do have the Haweka adapter ? I called Big-O-Tires and they told me there is no special adapter required to balance our tires.

 

The tire shops are the experts, it's kinda their thing, y'know? Kinda silly trying to tell them what they need to do their job. Just get em balanced.

 

i used to work @ a local tire shop..... well 2 companies actually... i knew my stuff, however a lot of the so called experts have no idea what they are actually doing..... i used to be able to balance a tire on fine cycle and get the weight down to below .1 of an ounce per side if you know what you are doing.... i was always the one who had to balance tires on the high end cars with picky customers.....


having worked at both wheel works and america's tire company, i say look @ america's, they always had the top of the line stuff..... and since they only do tires, their guys have mroe formal training in tires

 

I tired different places in the SF bay area and I didn't seem to have any luck balancing my tires. I even had Firestone balance them with the hunter machine and it didn't help at all. So I ended up at Toyota and everything is correct now, no more wobble

 

you are right, lot of those so called tire shop experts have no idea what is a Haweka adapter. One shop told me that they do not carry any special adapters to balance a different variety of cars because if they do, they would have hundreds of different adapters for every applications, whether the bolt pattern is 1,2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. I will check out America's tire company and see if they carry the Haweka adapter. Lot of the Toyota dealerships don't even know what is a Haweka adapter, that is why they never be able to balance the 4runner tires correctly.

 

I just called America's tire company located in Redwood City and yes, they do have the special adapter for the lugcentric rims. but make sure you requested for that special adapter when you do a wheel balance or else they will use the normal hub centric method for wheel balance. Unfortunately, they do not perform wheel alignments. They only work on wheels and tires only, no wheel alignments. Maybe they cannot afford the state of the art wheel alignment machine.