Sounds like you have a bad tire. Whomever did the balance for you... don't go back to them. That should've been caught during the balance.

 

There is a special balancing machine that supposedly works better than others. I forget the name of it though. It pushes the wheel against a few rollers in order to simulate a road surface, iirc.

 

That's called a road force balancer, it's made by hunter. It will balance a set of 4 tires and you mark each one as it tells you where it should go on the car. In the case of a separating tire a standard spin balancer, working eyeballs and some common sense is all that's needed to verify that problem.

Any technician that will balance tires and not watch the wheel and tire for out-of-round or bent wheel should find another line of work.

 

ok. update time. turns out it was a seizing left front caliper, which warped the rotors too, which was causing the shaking. new caliper, new rotors, new brake pads and car is running smooth in all speeds now! next up, rear struts, but i got a little time before that i guess. Thanks again for the suggestions!

 

Good to hear the problem is fixed, and it wasn't anything major!

 

Yeah I will definitely keep that in mind, in case I run into in the future.

 

haha, $230 on brake job plus the $100 on allignment/balancing on a car i bought for $1800, proportionately major enough! but i get what u r saying, couldve been lot worse!