Do New Tyres Need Balancing?

Most tyre dealers will offer a tyre balancing service when purchasing new tyres and this is because it’s strongly recommended as something you need to do before fitting new tyres to your vehicle. Tyre balancing involves ensuring the wheel rim, tyres and valve combination spin without causing potentially uncomfortable vibrations when driving. As well as being potentially uncomfortable for drivers and passengers, an unbalanced tyre can also be prone to excessive or uneven tyre wear that can reduce the lifespan and efficiency of your tyres.

How Often Should You Rebalance Your Tyres?

Although there is no guidance on intervals of balancing your tyres in terms of mileage, over time tyres can become unbalanced so it’s worth knowing signs of when you should consider visiting a local garage to have tyres rebalanced:

Noticing vibration when driving through the steering wheel, seats or floor
When rotating tyres, you should rebalance tyres
When you buy new tyres or have a tyre repaired
If you spot any uneven tread wear you should look to get your tyres rebalanced and potentially your wheels realigned based on the recommendation of your tyre retailer
If there is any further guidance in your vehicle handbook around rebalancing requirement signs for your specific model.

Best Tyres for Extending Tread Life

An unbalanced tyre can vibrate and spin imperfectly which can cause a slight judder effect rather than spinning smoothly, it’s due to this imbalance that tyres can wear unevenly impacting the life of your tyre tread. By ensuring your tyres are balanced correctly you can extend the life span of your tyre tread – but by choosing a tyre with Mileage Plus Technology™ you can extend the life of your tyre even further.

The Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance 2 provides up to 20% more mileage than the next best competitor and 50% more mileage than the predecessor.

Discover EfficientGrip Performance 2

How to Balance Tyres

A tyre balancing service involves putting the inflated tyre and rim onto a balancing machine that will spin the tyre and wheel to recognise any areas where the weight is uneven which can cause an imperfect spin. Weights can then be added by the tyre mechanic to the rim to create a uniform weight across the spin of the wheel and tyre. This process is repeated until the machine is unable to recognise any unbalanced areas on the tyre and creates an evenly weighted spin.

What’s The Difference Between Tyre Balancing and Wheel Alignment?

Tyre balancing focuses on the weight around the wheel and tyre combination to generate a smooth and comfortable ride and wheel alignment covers the angles of contact between the tyre and the road.

Learn more about Wheel Alignment