KO2 balancing problem !! - I need help.

I need some input on an on-going tire balancing issue.

I have a 2021 tundra with TRD sways front and back.
Bilstein 6112s in front with 1.9'' lift.
I ditched the 20'' aluminum wheels and bought 17'' method 705 (17'' X 8.5 +35)
these were mounted with BFG KO2s, 315/70/17. E load.

For 2800 miles I loved these tires. I really enjoyed driving my truck. They rode fairly quite, had great traction on and off road. The tires provided really good snow traction. No hunting or darting on highway, no shimmy or steering wheel shake. Plus, the truck looked bitchin.

One day at around 2800 miles, I noticed the steering wheel shake at 55 mph. Not violently, but about a total inch of travel back and forth, definitely enough to notice. I thought I lost a wheel weight or something changed. I brought the truck to Discount Tires (where i originally purche sed the tires). Explained the situation, they rebalanced and said 3 out of 4 tires were about an ounce off. They use a road force balancer. I drove away and everything seemed fine.

The Next day noticed the passenger front had the weights hitting the caliper, the noise bothered me, I took it back. They rebalanced, I left and the shake was noticed again. It was there for the next 200 miles. At 3000 miles I did a 5 wheel rotation. After that, the truck rode different.
constant steering wheel shake from 55-65 mph. I brought it back to DT, told them balancing was off and they tried again. Not successful. One tech said I had a bent rim, The manager suggested a different cone for mounting, and bent rim was ruled out. I brought it back the following week,
one tech said the driver front was wearing uneven, looked to be a bad belt, the manager said, "no its fine, nothing wrong here.

I took it to another DT location. They said both passenger tires were wearing uneven and replaced all 5 tires, not cost. they suggested going to a C load tire.

5 new tires BFG KO2 315/70/17 C load. They did a 4 wheel alignment. Front suspension was checked, all good. they match mounted a tires and road force balanced. Alignment guy test drove the truck.

I drove it home, and F*** me the truck was significantly worse! Steering wheel shaking from 50 to 60 quite pronounced. WTF ?

I took it to the original location DT. The manager balanced all the tires himself. The steering wheel shake was reduced a fair amount. It is still there but less so. he said all tires road force was around 10, and balanced with split weights inside and out.

They said because i have 8.5'' rims and 12.5'' inch tires, this is a good as it gets with this KO2.
They are also blaming the oversized 34'' tires.

It is not acceptable to drive a truck that shakes at 55-65 mph. What do I do?
They will change these tires out one more time. They are recommending a TOYO OC AT3, 285/75/17. this is about an inch narrower. They also claim TOYO doesn't have balancing issues.

At this point I will switch to anything that goes down the road without hassle. But I know many people run methods and 315/70/17, so what advice do you have from experience?

How do I balance the damn tires? Even if they do balance out, I concerned with the next rotation, I'm back to this same situation.

Please help.

Thanks,
Joe

 

So, a couple of things... What tire pressure are you running the tires at?

Second, the rim width/tire width isn't completely BS; you have a lot of sidewall and the tire protrudes 2" past the wheel on both sides of the ring. This *can* cause issues, but usually doesn't as long as the tires are properly inflated. IME, you have a 50/50 chance that the shop inflated the tires to the door placard pressure which, for a non-factory size tire in a load range E would be ~10 psi low. At lower pressures, you would get a softer ride, but the sidewall will flex more and follow imperfections in the road more. It can also cause vibration at highway speeds. Typically, you should be around 40 psi on an E range tire, but that particular size may be ok at slightly lower pressure. I'd still air them up a bit and see if it changes anything.

Third, most Discount Tires don't do alignments and/or front end work. Mine does not. I had some strange wear pattern on my last set of tires and asked them check the front end when I had my tires rotated. They let me know (in a professional way) that they would happily look for obvious issues, but that they don't do that kind of work and I would need to get it looked at elsewhere. Three shops and three alignments later and somebody finally noticed that the outer tie rods were toast. I replaced them and all was well.

Even though you have a 21 and I wouldn't initially suspect front end issues, larger tires and larger offset wheels can increase front end wear. Also, what shape are the Bilsteins in? Again, I wouldn't initially suspect them but they could be an issue as well. I got 100k out of my 6112's and pushed them to about the limit of what one should do with 6112's - not abused by any means, but definitely used them.

Fourth, have you inspected the brakes? It's not uncommon for a sticky caliper to warm up a rotor and cause the pads to chatter or the rotor to "warp" and manifest itself as a front end shake while driving, not just braking. I would suggest taking it for an easy few miles on the highway then pulling over at a rest stop or closest parking lot and measuring rotor temps with and IR thermometer. Then drive it home and inspect pad thickness on all four corners.

Lastly, unfortunately I've heard several complaints of balancing issues on BFG KO2's. Both of the tire shops I used to frequent recommended against them for that reason. That said, getting them road force balanced down to 10 is phenomenal. They aim for 20, which is very good (for most tire shops). I had DT install a set of Cooper AT3's on my truck that constantly had balancing issues. They admitted that one tire would only balance down to 25 and the another 35; they but both of those on the back to see if wearing them in would change. They didn't replace them (good on your DT for replacing all 5 tires for you) and re-balanced them for me with almost every tire rotation, but they were not as smooth and comfortable as the previous set of Cooper AT3's I had installed. However, as I mentioned earlier, my tie rods were on the way out so it wasn't entirely DT's or Cooper's fault. I should have pressed for one or two replacement tires when new, but it all worked out the same in the end - being, there was another issue with the vehicle that looked like balancing/tire/wheel issues for a while.

As a bonus, I don't know many guys that do a 5 tire rotation any more; that's kind of an old jeep guy thing. Reason being, trucks are designed to ride like cars now instead of boppity old jeep tractors and doing a 5 tire rotation means that one of your tires is ALWAYS going to have a different tread depth and wear pattern than the other tires. Whereas, a four tire rotation means all four of your tires are more or less equally worn, or at least have seen the same road conditions and loading conditions fro a more uniform wear. Perhaps I am wrong about that, but that's how it's been explained to me, and it makes sense on many levels. I wonder if that is part of the issue you are having.

 

I couldn’t get 285/70R17 Ko2’s to balance on my truck. Similar problem you are having but my date codes were about 6 years old on the tires and DT attributed the problem to that. Went with 315/70 Goodyears and they are smooth as silk. I would sell the KO2’s and buy something else especially if you had no issues prior to the KO2 installation.

Also a five tire rotation is a great option and not limited to old Jeeps. It keeps you from being up shit creek when you slash a sidewall and also extends the overall service life of your tires, but you need to rotate every 5k for it to work.

 

I fixed that problem By dumping the KO2’s and getting some wildpeaks.

 

I thought I was the only
One balanced my 37in ko’s 9 times still not perfect but I can live with it

 

this could have been me writing the above. Almost the exact same issue. Went to a 17” wheel with 295/70/17 KO2s. 3000 miles later felt out of balance. Went to 3 different DTs, an alignment shop and the place that did my lift. DT tries to tell me the rim was bent. But it wasn’t. The wheel did turn out to have an issue. The hub center bore was off. So the tire would balance fine. I’d drive off and it would be shaking before long. They had to use an old style cone to figure it out. Swapped out the rims. Kept the KO2s and all has been well for 30k miles. Truck rides awesome

 

Thank you for all the replys and info.

I have been monitoring tire pressure daily. The original e load tires were set a 40 psi cold and would reach 44_45 at highway speeds.
The C loads are at 34 cold and run about 38.
The bilsteins 6612s went in about 1k before the tires. They now have about 4k and nothing is leaking.
Breaks are fairly new, about 10k on them.
I will probably go the 255/75 route on toyos just to start fresh. If they give me the wheel shake, I will look at axels and suspension. But everything looked tight and alignment was no problem.

I hope it's not wheels, methods weren't cheap.

Thanks again, I appreciate your response, I feel a little less crazy.

Joe

 

I used to love BFG all terrain TA’s, then KO2’s. I will never run them again due to balancing issues. Used to be an awesome tire.

 

Unfortunately this is a common problem with the KO2's. Some people have run them without issues, but for some reason, quite a few have not been so lucky. Toyo's would definitely fix the problem.

 

Wheels are lug centric and not hub centric, your wheels can be damaged if lug nuts were hammered down by an impact. Lug into centric rings, they are specific to wheel and vehicle.

 

Rngr188
The method 705 is hub centric.

 

Ko2 Balancing problems is a well known thing at this point. Usually the tire is out of round. Just look at it. Warranty the tire if you have one.

 

I've also been experiencing some wheel balance issues after replacing my tires. Not the KO2's though.

I had a set of Sumitomo Encounter A/T's P285/70R17 (33x11.5) mounted on 17x9 Fuel Beast (D564) +20mm offset wheels for over 4 years with no issues. Rotated every 5K-6K miles and never had them rebalanced. They ran smooth down the highway, but I was ready for a new set of tires.

After countless research, I decided to go with the Falken Rubitrek A/T's in the same size. I wanted to do business with Discount Tire, but they were unable to order the Rubitrek's. I decided to buy them from SimpleTire and have DT install them anyways. The Falken's started shaking around 65mph shortly after getting them mounted. I brought them back and they told me some of the weights fell off. It seemed to get better, but the shake returned while on a 1k mile road trip. I brought the truck back so they could balance it a 3rd time. They said the balance was off again. They said the road force readings weren't too bad with two of the worst tires around 25 and 35. The balance seems to be better, but still not as smooth as the Sumitomo's.

I did upgrade to the Bilstein 6112/5100's a couple months before the new tires. I didn't see any loose suspension components and had it aligned just fine from an experienced tech shortly after getting the new tires installed.

I think my issue could be caused by one or two of the tires being out of round. It could also be a Discount Tire issue. I know there are different adaptors with balancing aftermarket hub centric Tundra wheels compared to OEM lug centric wheels. I also see them going crazy with their pneumatic wire wheel. I might pull the wheels off and give them a good inspection. Hell, it could be our 17" wheels being so close to the caliper and the wheel weights getting knocked off. For whatever reason, it's very frustrating indeed!

 

UPDATE !

After driving with the C load KO2s for a 1100 miles, I couldn't take it anymore. The pronounced steering wheel vibration was from 55 to 65 mph.
I had a local shop inspect the front suspension, steering rack and hubs. Nothing here to report. I asked Discount tires near my home to replace the tires a second time.
They asked, "what if this doesn't fix the shake"? I think its been established, that the wheels are not bent and the front suspension is solid and aligned properly, what else could it be?
They said they would contact BFG and get back to me. They never did.

I went back to a different location DT (that replaced the first set of E load KO2s for the C load). They agreed to replace the entire set of tires (spare and all) 1 more time.
I replaced 315/70/17 KO2s with 285/75/17 Toyo OC AT3.

Just picked up the truck, they said these balanced night and day compared to the BFGs. The BFGs took 6.5-8 oz per wheel, the Toyos took 2-3.
I drove it on the highway, problem is solved. No vibrations, no steering wheel shake.

Hope this helps someone else in some way. Thank you for all the support and information.

Joe

 

Oh, didn't know that. Our NV 305 are lug centric.

 

I double checked with method, the 705s I have on my '21 tundra are hub centric.
However, there are Method wheels with the 5X150 lug pattern, specifically for Land Cruisers, that are lug centric.

As far as the 305, I do not see "hub centric" on the product description.

- Joe