Help! Tire & Alignment Fiasco!

I thought that the tires have to be on the car too. I read a few articles, and nowhere is it spelled out:

http://www.familycar.com/Alignment.htm

I KNOW that the tires have to be on the car for the balancing. It's the tires that are being balanced.

Maybe we can find a car guru in the crowd!

Thanks for the reply. I have spent the past day and a half researching this online and cannot come up with a clear cut answer. One web site I contacted did respond and although the guy was not a mechanic he did have a lot of experience under cars, and it was his understanding that the alignment and balancing should have been done after the new tires were installed. I just need help here to know if I have a valid fight on my hands. Any info any can give me is GREATLY appreciated!

Mostly, balancing is done off the car. It is better to do on the car as this allows for any balancing situation involving brake parts.

Generally, I would like alignment done with the new tires, but I'm not at all sure it makes any difference.

This is a picture of a wheel balancer similar to that used by most shops.



It spins the wheel and a computer tells the tech where he needs to put weight to balance the wheel. The balancing MUST be done with the new tires on the wheels but not on the car. What balancing does is adjust for any out of weight areas on the new tires.


I'm not sure how you would balance your wheels on the car.


Alignment adjusts the toe in etc of the wheels. It shouldn't matter when it was done unless your wheels are bent or you are putting different size tires on the car.

http://www.familycar.com/Alignment.htm

thanks for the replies... I am so confused now .. I don't know if I got good service or not! I can't tell if that is the same (or similar) machine I saw the mechanic place the tire in, as I saw it from behind. But to me, and my untrained, unskilled eyes, it looked like a big plastic storage bin! I didn't see anything near it that resembles anything in the picture you posted. Who knows?!?! And while I'm thinking of it, I have since read (during this ridiculous amount of research) that the lug nuts will need to be re-torqued after 50-100 miles, Is this correct? Is this something I will need to do? What does that mean? Re-tightened? Can I do that myself? (I'll let the hubby do it for me!) I am going on a trip next weekend and will travel well over 100 miles!

That would be the balancer. They often have plastic covers to prevent people from being spattered with gunk from the wheels as they spin.

The recommendation to re-torque can be ignored. It doesn't hurt to check your lug bolts now and again to see if they are coming loose but most shops over tighten the nuts.

Torque is the amount of force used to tighten a bolt. Manufacturers have specific torques for each bolt on a car. The idea is it should be enough force to tighten the bolt without breaking the bolt or what it holds. Most tire shops use air tools to tighten the lug nuts and don't torque to manufactures specifics. Not to worry because there hasn't been a major problem of tires falling off for failure to torque properly. The biggest concern would be under torquing which would leave the lug loose.

The tires don't matter for the alignment and you always balance tires off the car.

When aligining a front end the alignment system is takes it's measurments off of the wheel spindles (or hubs) so the wheels and tires are pretty much irrelevant.

There is also no way to balance wheels/tires once they are on the car. You'd be balancing the car - not the wtires. That big garabage bin you saw was the balancing machine. The big plastic shield (usually black or grey) is a safety shield so that anything flying off of the tires doesn't hurt the mechanics. (On occassion, if someone doesn't know what they are doing, the entire wheel and tire comes flying off during balancing! Doh!)

And yes, you should retorque your lug nuts after driving for a bit but you know what? Nobody does it. Very, very few garages even measure the torque when they put the lug nuts in to begin with and most people don't even own a torque wrench (and even if you owned one, you wouldn't spend $300/year to keep it calibrated properly). Just check you lugnuts and make sure they are all snug.

Ok, so I feel a little better now. Perhaps they didn't screw me over quite as badly as I thought. My husband looked at my car and pointed out the weights to me. So I guess that's proof that they did balance the tires. I still question the alignment, doing so prior to the new tires being placed on the car, but the jury poll seems to be about 50-50 on that one. So I guess I'll let it go. Although I'll never understand why I never saw a mechanic near my vehicle for more than 5 minutes at a clip and why this whole procedure took more than 3 1/2 hours!!