Write-Up: Haweka Tire Balancer

Balancing Your Tires: The Haweka Adapter
By: Bob_98SR5
Written: 3/6/06
Application: All 4Runners

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Issues of Balancing and Vibration
One of the more common complaints of 4Runner owners when buying newer, larger tires is balancing them. Many owners purchase larger, meatier tires such as the BFG AT and MTR series, but then complain that they have balancing and vibration issues at higher speeds.

Wherever you choose to buy your tires or have them installed is "Do you have the Haweka adapter?" If you get a pause at the end of the phone, go elsewhere. This is a very common piece of equipment that any reputable tire shop will have, given the popularity of Toyota vehicles.

Hub-centric vs. Lug-centric
Toyota Alloy Wheels are machined to be both hub centric and lug centric. When you actually do the machining for a wheel, the easiest way to locate it on the table is to machine the center first and then use that to locate the wheel for all other milling operations. The machining of the lug holes would likely come quite some time into the machining process so it would be almost impossible to say that these were truly a centric point to the rim (although the tolerances on CNC machining for a company of Toyota's caliber would be very tight - thus for all intents and purposes the wheels they produced should be both lug and hub centric at the same time).

The problem most shops have is that they don't have the proper adapter cone for the Toyota wheels. The lugs on the Toyota wheels are deeply inset with a sharp, close shoulder from the face of the wheel. Most adapter cones will contact that shoulder at the face of the wheel instead of the actual hub. The correct solution would be to use a cone with a smaller diameter and a longer taper to miss the shoulder. Most shops don't have this, and it would be special for just the Toyota wheels. However, a lot of shops do have a lug-centric adapter. Using the lug-centric adapter will alleviate the issue by bypassing the use of the hub all-together.

Also, the Hunter GSP9700 is the best balancing machine out there.

You can locate one close to you using THIS link.

The shop will still need to use either the small diameter, long taper cone or a lug-centric adapter.

You will never ever get the wheel properly balanced using normal tire balancing equipment.

The special "Lug Centric" adapter is called a "Haweka" and here is the page sent out by Haweka:

http://www.4runners.org/writeups/haw..._mandatory.jpg

Here's the downloadable version: Haweka Adapter (pdf)

Note that the TSB that applies to using the Haweka adapter is SU002-96.