What did you do to your Ranger today?

[MXGOLF]

Filled Lucille with gas. OUCH. the most I have ever paid. $5.69/gallon Supreme 91.

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[RedDakooter05]

Filled Lucille with gas. OUCH. the most I have ever paid. $5.69/gallon Supreme 91.

Wait, thought we had 15gal tanks?

 

[ControlNode]

Wait, thought we had 15gal tanks?

18.

 

[RedDakooter05]

18.

Now I feel gas lit(no pun) by the low fuel indicator.

 

[Jhbryaniv]

Nothing major. Just removed the Tremor stickers. They weren't to my liking.

I am torn on the bed stickers. I thought they would be the first thing I removed from the truck. I wouldn't add them if they weren't there, but not sure I want to remove them anymore...

It might be because I'm in love with the toyota stamped bed for the trd pros.

 

[9zero1790]

LoL

Well... North Florida, new Orleans, Vicksburg, North Texas, Denver....

That's the summary I can remember right now...

In north Texas there is some big canyon second largest in the US or something were going to see...

yes the palo duro canyon. its a beautiful area. geology nerds paradise. its an impressive canyon as long as you have not seen the grand canyon first lol. i saw them in reverse order and it sorta spoiled the moment for the pd.

 

[Jhbryaniv]

yes the palo duro canyon. its a beautiful area. geology nerds paradise. its an impressive canyon as long as you have not seen the grand canyon first lol. i saw them in reverse order and it sorta spoiled the moment for the pd.

We're staying just up the road and planning on a dayish at pd.

I have not seen the grand canyon... It was between pd and some place else further south, canyon like.... ?

Either way, I'm sure it'll be plenty Texan... ? ER, I mean plenty pretty... ?

 

[Cabose-1]

Wait, thought we had 15gal tanks?

I think its 18. So the manual says. Imagine my suprise when i filled up with 18.7 gallons. Lol

 

[JohnnyO]

New rear shocks. Plain old Monroes. See if this fixes the intermittent vibration. Had to get creative with the lower left nut, it was spinning inside the bracket that’s supposed to hold it in place. That was the only bolt with rust.

Vise grips alone wouldn't do it so I pounded in a flat screwdriver from the bottom and an awl from the top and used the breaker bar almost all the way. Get R Done. The other three bolts didn't give me any problems.

Vibration is still there but not as bad. The ride is a heckuva lot better though. Might be the tires. It didn't start until I got new tires last year bur they've been balanced several times.

 

[Colo_Ranger]

Vibration is still there but not as bad. The ride is a heckuva lot better though. Might be the tires. It didn't start until I got new tires last year bur they've been balanced several times.

Who installed them? See if they have a road force balancer. It matches the heavy spot in the tire to the heavy spot in the wheel (technically, matching means finding them and making them opposing). If the heavy spots of the wheel and tire are aligned, no amount of balancing will fix it.

 

[Dynawide]

Who installed them? See if they have a road force balancer. It matches the heavy spot in the tire to the heavy spot in the wheel (technically, matching means finding them and making them opposing). If the heavy spots of the wheel and tire are aligned, no amount of balancing will fix it.

Don't trust a shop to actually know how to use a Road Force balancer just because they have one. Developed a vibration in my Mustang so took the wheels into a Ford dealer who has a Road Force unit. The attached picture shows what their tech did. No way were the tires ever matched with the high and low spots and then the clown puts weights on the outside of the wheel. I blew my gasket on the service manager and asked him point blank what the hell they were doing & he tried to defend that amount of weight & the placement. I asked him to show me 1 vehicle on their lot with similar shoddy work and he refused.

 

[Colo_Ranger]

Don't trust a shop to actually know how to use a Road Force balancer just because they have one. Developed a vibration in my Mustang so took the wheels into a Ford dealer who has a Road Force unit. The attached picture shows what their tech did. No way were the tires ever matched with the high and low spots and then the clown puts weights on the outside of the wheel. I blew my gasket on the service manager and asked him point blank what the hell they were doing & he tried to defend that amount of weight & the placement. I asked him to show me 1 vehicle on their lot with similar shoddy work and he refused.

There are several types of balancing. Static balancing only addresses up and down vibration and has a single weight on the inside of the wheel. Dynamic balancing addresses up and down and side to side vibrations. Dynamic has weights on the inside and the outside. If you want a good balance, you’ll need to be okay with dynamic balancing. Anything under 3 ounces is actually reasonable (3 ounces is one strip of sticky weights). They might have been able to do better with a dynamic balance but every tire and every wheel has a heavy spot. Road force can align them (opposite) but it isn’t always perfect. There is a reason that tires are balanced. I’ve balanced a lot of tires in my day and sometimes (read: most times) you have to decide between looking cool or having them actually balanced out. Without having done your wheel/tire combo, I can’t say for sure, but weights are a necessary part of smooth tire operation. In 5 years of balancing tires, I’ve never had one that didn’t need weights.

 

[ControlNode]

I can't say that weight is bad from a balanced POV. While the weights are not as center to the wheel as I would have tried, perhaps brake caliper to raised area didn't leave enough room to comfortably put the weights there. The weights are behind the spoke line, so not on the outside as far as I'm concerned. Granted you may not want to see them, but doesn't mean they did a bad job, unless on your service order ticket you stated, "no weights are to be visible from outside the wheel", which is purely a cosmetic reason. On some of the newer road force balancers the system will laser point the exact spot for the tech to put the weight, granted changing the balance mode could change that location. But if you had a static balance and still had vibration, going to a dynamic balance is a logical step to address that. Without watching what the tech checked before getting to putting that weight on, I would not say they did a bad job. If the run out on the tire was good, no bent rim the only other thing would have been spin the tire on the rim, but most shops only do that on initial tire install.

When I worked in the shop, there were three modes on our Coats balancer: inside and outside (normally only used on steel wheels, though we did back then have hammer on weight with different profiles for aluminum wheels), one that puts a middle area stick-on and inside (how I normally did aluminum wheels), and inside only (if caliper and wheel didn't leave room for stick-ons and customer didn't want outside weights). The order listed is also the order they work best for vibration control as far as I could tell. When I was doing my car or a high-performance car (Corvette and such) I would put that Coats machine in a mode that didn't round to the nearest .25oz and I would cut weights to get the imbalance under .10oz total. On my wheels I would even use tape and get them to under 0.05oz. I could go +120MPH and no vibrations at all. But I was the only tech in the shop that would do that balance method, as it took a bit longer as the machine rarely gives the right number first pass, so moving weights or removing some from the first pass would be needed after rechecking.

 

[txquailguy]

Finally had to do a brake service on the Ranger at 103.5K. So the only reason I am posting this is the fact that my front brakes are still at 70% pad life and my rears were at 10%. I left the front alone for right now, did the rear and had the system flushed......wow....I would have never thought these pads would last like that.

 

[JohnnyO]

There are several types of balancing. Static balancing only addresses up and down vibration and has a single weight on the inside of the wheel. Dynamic balancing addresses up and down and side to side vibrations. Dynamic has weights on the inside and the outside. If you want a good balance, you’ll need to be okay with dynamic balancing. Anything under 3 ounces is actually reasonable (3 ounces is one strip of sticky weights). They might have been able to do better with a dynamic balance but every tire and every wheel has a heavy spot. Road force can align them (opposite) but it isn’t always perfect. There is a reason that tires are balanced. I’ve balanced a lot of tires in my day and sometimes (read: most times) you have to decide between looking cool or having them actually balanced out. Without having done your wheel/tire combo, I can’t say for sure, but weights are a necessary part of smooth tire operation. In 5 years of balancing tires, I’ve never had one that didn’t need weights.

That’s one problem, on my Ranger’s wheels you can’t put weights on the outer lip.

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