My steering wheel shimmies from side to side when driving at low speeds and high speeds. Does that means my tires are out of balance?
If so, what causes the tires to become unbalanced? For example, I left my 4Runner with a friend for a couple weeks while I was on vacation. It turns out he took the truck off-road. Could this be why my tires are suddenly out of balance?

Also, I'm in new of some new tires however my Runner has over 214,000 miles on it. I'm currently running the GoodYear Wrangler RTS and would like to go with a much cheaper tire as I don't know how many more miles I'm going to get out of the ole girl. Any recommendations for the "best bang for the buck"?

 

Gods way of saying don't let other people off road your truck.

 

Treadwrights.
and 214k? thats it? you still got half a million on her.

and is the shim bad? it could be tires. or a steering problem...

 

yea the shim is pretty bad (I think) .....
I'll check into Treadwrights. Thanks!

 

A belt could have broken in the tire causing bad lateral run-out which causes tire shimmy.