Some background information. I am a highway contractor for the USPS in rural North Dakota. Most of my roads are gravel and in the middle of nowhere so I often get mud in the rims when it rains or ice/snow in the winter. This of course throws my tires off balance. I recently purchased new tires, and they cleaned out the rims before putting them on. I thought that the shaking would go away, but it didn’t. They told me I had a damaged rim and had a hard time balancing it, so I had them swap out my spare rim(which was fine) for the damaged one. It still shakes on the highway after 60. The thing is, while there is a vibration all the time, the steering wheel wiggles back and forth off an on, not constantly, like something is going in and out of balance. Any idea what the problem could be, maybe something else was damaged when the rim was damaged? Did they not balance the tires correctly? Thanks for the help.
You are correct, maybe something else got damaged when you damaged the rim.
Get this up on a rack and a good chassis shop and have it gone over thoroughly. 7 years of that kind of driving can definitely take its toll on a chassis, especially after having been subjected to those temperature extremes year after year…and I speak as someone who lived in North Dakota. I have fond (not) memories of driving down the road with everything in my suspension frozen solid including the foam in the seats.
The wheels and tires can also be better checked using Road FOrce Balancing. These machines spin the wheels while applying a simulated road force with a spinning drum pressed against the tread. A good chassis shop should have such a machine.
Did they check the alignment also?