Tire Balance warranty?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 12951
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Deleted member 12951

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Before I went on a trip for vacation, I bought my truck in for an oil change and tire rotation. I told the service advisor that the wheel shakes/vibrates after around 70mph or so. He got all four of them balanced and charged me $50 for that, plus the oil change and rotation, total was something over $100. Granted I had only 5k miles on the truck. I would have thought the balance would of been covered under the first 12k but didn't complain and paid my bill.

I went on my trip and noticed it was a lot better but still there. I got in the mud on my trip and it really wobbled, My trip added almost 3k miles on it. When I got home, I took the tires off and cleaned, hard dried mud was causing it, of course.

But now that everything is clean, it is back to the vibration that I felt when I first took it on the trip. It really isn't that bad and still better than what it was but noticeable. I kept meaning to call the dealer but kept forgetting as it was minor.

It's been about 45 days since. I finally remembered to call the dealer and told them that I will be in next month for another oil change and tire rotation and asked if they could check the balance again as it still vibrates but was better.

He told me that he would be glad to check them but that he would not do it for free, I would have to pay again to have them balanced. Said if I would of called him when I was on the road the following day and came back in immediately when I got home he might of been able to do something for me. He further went on to say, that the nature of that truck being the raptor, he wasn't going to balance the tires again for free regardless. He said he would have to talk to management otherwise. I told him to pursue management as I was not happy with his call.

So less than 60 days and less than 4k miles. Is this common, no warranty on balancing tires? I'm kinda pissed about it and thinking I will never bring my truck back to the dealer for service unless it's guaranteed warranty work and having a problem. But maybe if this is the norm, then I have nothing to be pissed about....
 

pat'sRAPTOR

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I've never heard of a dealership covering the balancing under warranty. Now if you go to a place like discount tire they charge a little extra for lifetime balancing and rotation for as long as you have the tires or wheels you got from them that's probably what you're thinking of.


As for the balancing thing I know my methods were a little hard to balance and every now and then I knock off a weight cause the very minimal clearance between the brake caliper and the wheel
 

Boss Hoss

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There are very few dealers except maybe on the higher end that can road force balance, it is the only way I balance mine from the 37 inch to the sports car tires with the highest speed rating. I am lucky in that the Discount Tire near me has one--not many of them do. Example---the 325 60's I put on a few months ago had excessive road force at least for me almost 35 lbs so the machine measured the run out (concentricity) of the wheel and determined that the tire needed to be moved about 120 degrees or so. Broke it down moved--reran and the weights to balance went down by almost 20% and road force was 15... Smooth as glass....
 
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Well I wasn't worried about it being under ford warranty or not, I paid that bill. I was more or less asking about just having it done less than 2 months ago and not being covered. Sometimes you see things like 6k miles or 6 months.
 

ALDABRAMAN

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I had a vibration in the left rear the day i took delivery. I brought it back in the next day and explained the issue. The salesman said it sounds like a bent/out of round wheel. They took it to the service center and swapped both rear tires from another new raptor that had not been sold yet. Problem solved, however whoever purchases that other raptor will have a bent rim!
 

farman

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I had my tires balanced under warranty when I was in for an alignment once, I just told them when I got there to check if I had any wheel weights missing when I took it in. they didn't find any wheel weights missing but said they balanced the tires because they needed it. I just assumed it was something they do like a one time free alignment. I had probably 15,000 miles on the truck.
 
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I had my tires balanced under warranty when I was in for an alignment once, I just told them when I got there to check if I had any wheel weights missing when I took it in. they didn't find any wheel weights missing but said they balanced the tires because they needed it. I just assumed it was something they do like a one time free alignment. I had probably 15,000 miles on the truck.


That's cool. Apparently my dealer are a bunch of **** wads who do not understand customer service. I am thinking of never going there again, neither for service or even to buy a vehicle in the future. Nothing bothers me more than **** poor customer service.
 
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