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| Arizona Rough Riders Safety Article: Keep Your Balance |
This article submitted by: Ken Blaisdell
If you do any rock-crawling with your 4x4 it can be difficult to keep your wheels in balance for on-highway driving. Even if you start the trail with perfectly balanced wheels, there’s a good chance you’ll come out the other end having moved or lost one or more of the wheel-weights. Sliding a wheel across a rock can slide the weights around on the rim, or pop them off all together. When the wheels on your 4x4 get out of balance, not only can it make your highway ride shaky and uncomfortable, but it can be downright difficult to control, and potentially dangerous.
So here’s a simple trick to keep your balance when off-roading: Use a permanent marker (like a Sharpie) to mark both ends of your wheel-weights when you know the wheels are in balance.Then after you’ve gone through a tight squeeze, you can check to see if any weights are missing, and recover them.At the end of trail, you can check for movement, and tap them back into place with a screwdriver and hammer.
Another “good to know” item is Discount Tire’s lifetime wheel balance warrantee. If you buy your tires there, and have them spin-balance your wheels (for an extra $10 each), you can bring them into any Discount Tire and have them re-balanced for free, for as long as they last.
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