Hey guys I've been having this problem since I rotated my tires. Basically between the speeds of 20 and 45 MPH my steering wheel will rock 1/2-1" from side to side pretty often. It doesn't affect steering but it is strange to see this much movement in the wheel.

It only happened after I rotated the tires. My father always told me that for radials you should just rotate front to back. But I looked it up and Mickey Thompson said it doesnt matter and even our Jeep manuals say to cross them.

Anyway if my memory is correct I rotated them like this:





Did I do something wrong? Should I just live with this little annoyance? Will it go away after the tires get used to it?

 

Sounds like you need to have the front tires rebalanced. Does one of the tires on the front have more balancing weights on it than the others? If so that one is probably the problem tire.

 

I'll go take a look. I wonder if they bothered to balance the spare originally...

 

OK, the passenger side (previously the spare) has 3 large weights adjacent to one small weight and the drivers side has 2 large weights adjacent to one small weight.

This is new to me so bear with me. Can I just remove one of the large weights from the passenger side tire or do you need special tools?

 

when I do the x rotation, I usually put the spare on the driver side rear(Im sure passenger side rear wouldnt matter either). Then I move both rear tires forward. move the passenger side front to the spare hanger, and the driver side front to the passenger side rear.

and yes, you do need special tools to properly balance a tire.

 

O.K. Sounds good guys, I'll take it to the Goodyear place down the road.

Should I have all 4 rebalanced while I'm there?

 

If the wheel has weights on it then it has been balanced, maybe not that well though. You should probably have them roadforce balanced, this would tell you if you have a problem such as an out of round tire or wheel, radial pull due to a shifted cord or some other manufacturing defect. Remember a cube can be balanced but it still will not ride that smoothly.