Thanks for the answer, Phil. When a tire and/or rim is extremely out of balance, there are several steps that can be undertaken to diagnose if it is the tire, or the rim, or both.
It would require removing the tire from the wheel, and checking the wheel alone. I doubt you would get a busy tire shop to do that, especially since you didn't buy the tires or rims them in the first place.
Sometimes, you can do what is called match-mounting. You determine the heavy/light spots in the tire and rim, then match the heavy spot in one to the light spot in the other. This is very time consuming. Sometimes if you get the heavy spot in a tire mounted to a heavy spot in the wheel, it gets way off balance and requires a lot of weight to compensate.
Some new tires will come from the factory with yellow and red dots on the sidewall, which helps in this process of match mounting when the tire is initially mounted. Some wheels will have a small dimple in it, to help identify the heavy spot for match mounting purposes.
The up and down movement in the wheel interests me. Most of the time, wheels are mounted on a tire balancing machine, using a tapered cone thru the center hub of the wheel. If this center of the wheel isn't machined perfectly round, then your entire wheel will be off-centered on the balancing machine. I have seen burrs and such on the center holes before, which causes everything to off kilt.
They make balancing adaptors that mount the wheel to the balancer using the stud holes in the wheel (just like you will have it mounted on your trailer). Here again, this is a time consuming process and many tire shops wont have this adaptor. That one adaptor costs over a grand.
Let us know what the outcome of this matter is, or if there is a different second opinion from anyone.
Thanks
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