I purchased a truck (Ford F250, with lift) a year and a half ago and it has a set of nice looking tires on it. Rims are 33x12.5 R20 so they are unique and awesome rims as well.

I have developed a bit of vibration so at my oil change I had the rotate and balance them. . . . thats when things got wonky.

The two front tires are abysmal on the 'road force' with each taking over 10oz of weights. (it looked like he glued a panel of weights inside the rim). The right side tire is 88, and the left side was 186. My mechanic was somewhat alarmed.

Some places say that it will just create excessive wear so to watch for it. Others are saying the tire is bad and could blow. I even asked Grok on X and it said that it will lead to instability, especially in wet weather and could also lead to a blowout.

The tires only seem to have 20k miles on them and have lots of tread left. I am just not sure what to do. It is $1500 for some Falken Wildpeaks so I am politely inquiring about your thoughts.

Also, My mechanic almost seemed offended that the tires were even on the truck. They are Venom Power (a chinese company).

1. lift
2. large, wide tires
3. tape-on weights
4. 3/4 ton, presumably used as a daily driver
You aren't using the best combo for a smooth, vibration free ride, but it's not impossible.

Are they wearing evenly or are they cupping on the edges (high & low spots)? That will create 'vibration' as well as noise. Balance issues usually won't create noise (but it can cause cupping, which will then create noise). If they aren't cupped and won't balance out, either the tires are crap, damaged or your wheel(s) aren't true (saw it a lot on custom wheels). A road-force balancer can mitigate issues better than just spin-only, but there are limits to what you can do to balance something that wants to vibrate.
Also, is it at all speeds, getting progressively worse as you go faster or is it OK at low speed, then really bad all of a sudden?

Cupping can be due to alignment, crappy tires, worn suspension parts, driving conditions, or just the vehicle/tire combo.
My wife's grand cherokee L cupped all 4 within 20k from new and the only alignment issue @30k was a little toe-in, which I wouldn't have expected to cause the issue, at least not that severe that quick. Based on what I saw on the tires, I expected camber to be out on all 4 corners. It spent most of 30k at 62mph on a 4-lane highway in it's first year, so not rough driving conditions & the tires were rotated 2x in that 30k. OE Bridgestones, not my favorite, but not terrible - so likely just going to be a thing the jeep does. I'll have another shop check the alignment when it gets tires & go with a better tire.

quote:

Originally posted by redstone:
The two front tires are abysmal on the 'road force' with each taking over 10oz of weights. (it looked like he glued a panel of weights inside the rim). The right side tire is 88, and the left side was 186. My mechanic was somewhat alarmed.

That's a lot of weight. Heavy tires/wheels require more weight to balance, but that's a lot & tape-on weights aren't as effective as the old clip-on weights that went on the inside/outside lip of the wheel. I'd try breaking the bead, spinning the tire on the wheel before I added that much weight. Inexperienced tire techs usually keep adding weight until it 0s, then you hear the older guys bitch when it comes back & they have to do the work to get it right.
New tires have a dot that tells you where to put it in relation to the valve stem, but sometimes you need to adjust. If the tires still have the dot & all 4 are off vs the valve stem, whoever put the tires on probably didn't give a shit.

It's a heavy truck lifted with components of unknown quality, aftermarket wheels of unknown quality, and cheap Chinese tires of questionable quality. It could be a ton of things.

Since the back tires balanced out ok and the fronts needed a lot of weight though, I would be looking for worn components in the front or alignment issues causing irregular wear before blaming the tires. Get those issues straightened out for sure before you throw new tires at it and wind up with the same issue on the new ones in another 10k.

Assuming everything checks out ok, you may just need to be really vigilant about rotating more frequently going forward. Bigger, more aggressive tires and lifted suspensions are just harder on everything. Rotating every 3-4k will spread that wear around a whole lot better.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
..

"Are they wearing evenly or are they cupping on the edges (high & low spots)? "

..
"Also, is it at all speeds, getting progressively worse as you go faster or is it OK at low speed, then really bad all of a sudden? "


.

Yes, the front right one,that had the 186 score, was cupping real bad. The others did not seem to bad and were wearing normally.

On the highway it is mostly fine. It is just occasionally I will get a real bad vibration, but after a few turns it seems to go away.

After reading ya'lls thoughts I am thinking I may just replace the bad tire, and then have a proper alignment done. See if that helps.

Driving it home it seemed to be ok.

How would I find someone who could check the rims themselves? Or is that possible?

also, the wheels are XD WHEELS XD820 GRENADE

The roundness of the rims and tires should be obvious to the guy running the balancer.
If the wheels are reasonably round, I'd suspect the Chinese tires.
Does the truck have enough miles on it that some of the suspension bushings or ball joints could have excessive wear?

Most tires have a yellow dot on them to indicate the lightest part of the tire. When mounting a tire to a rim, that yellow dot should be placed at the location of the valve stem/tire pressure sensor hole of the rim.

Once I had new tires mounted to rims. I noticed that the tire guy was using about a 6" strip of weights. I also noticed that the yellow dot was nowhere near the valve stem. I made him remount the tires with the dot aligned, and then he only needed about a 1" weight strip.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
The roundness of the rims and tires should be obvious to the guy running the balancer.
If the wheels are reasonably round, I'd suspect the Chinese tires.
Does the truck have enough miles on it that some of the suspension bushings or ball joints could have excessive wear?

Yes, it has 260k miles on it. Thats how I got the truck. I paid my friends repair bill on it and he let me keep the truck. It has a rebuilt motor, transmission and rearend.
I am also pretty sure the left front brake caliper hangs sometimes as it will briefly pull to the left.

I am starting to thing the front suspension is pretty wore out and needs a deep servicing.

Your tires are the single most important safety component of your vehicle and you’re trusting your life to some Chinese junk?

How important is your life to you? Seriously.

Lifted, straight axle, 4x4 3/4 ton truck.
Sounds like you have the beginnings of “death wobble”. Big changes to the already marginal front end geometry on these trucks rarely ends well, in my experience.

All it took to fix it on my factory height, factory wheel and tire F250 was 4 new tires, 4 new aftermarket shocks, a front end rebuild, and some creative front end alignment tweaks.

Good luck, YMMV.

quote:

Also, My mechanic almost seemed offended that the tires were even on the truck.

I would have been, too. (Past tense due to my being retired.) You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

Some aftermarket wheels have a spacer/filler between the center of the hub and the center hole in the wheel. If they are supposed to be there but are not, the wheel/tire may balance on the machine, but when put on the truck, will wobble due to not being centered. Such a wheel will not center with the lug nuts alone.

Having had and still having a lifted truck there are so many factors that could impact tire wear. You mentioned the cheap Chinese tires but didn’t mention the brand of wheels or anything about the lift. I suspect that either the wheel itself, the tires, or possibly both are out of spec. What brand are the wheels and what do you know about the lift kit on the truck?

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
Some aftermarket wheels have a spacer/filler between the center of the hub and the center hole in the wheel. If they are supposed to be there but are not, the wheel/tire may balance on the machine, but when put on the truck, will wobble due to not being centered. Such a wheel will not center with the lug nuts alone.

"Hub Centric" little plastic rings that are easily lost or never received with the wheels. I don't think an F250 would have them, but I've been out of that game for almost decade-S now.
Any decent tire shop should be able to diagnose a wheel issue. It doesn't sound like that is your problem.

If the 'worst' one was cupped, you'll never get it to not-vibrate (or stop making that whaa-whaa drone). It will get worse. You can either live with it or replace, but I would not replace just 1.

If you've never had a 3/4 ton 4x4 before, they don't ride like a cadillac. Lift & pretty tires/wheels will make it worse.
Alignment isn't going to 'fix' anything, but might stop NEW tires from cupping. Nothing will save tires already cupped. Suspension, lack of rotation & some vehicles just cup the tires, so you might not ever fix it.

Had a buddy with a mid-2000's F250 that had a shop tell him the entire front end wear items needed replaced to something like $2700. Same shop rebuilt the trans 4x in 2 years so I have no idea why he trusted them to "fix" suspension. I didn't even jack it up - tires were cupped horribly and nothing was loose with the ol' crowbar test. Michelin fixes suspension too, had the tech that did the alignment look at the front end and got the same answer I gave him. I told him he owed me 1/2 of what he saved. LTX M/S - or whatever they call the newest generation of it will ride well, have decent enough traction and wear excellent. I've got 75k out of more than 1 set. You'll shit whenever they give you the quote, but saving 20% isn't worth what you are dealing with.