Do Mud Tires Make Your Truck Shake? [What Else Could It Be?]

Mud tires do their job well keeping a driver on the road in rough conditions, but they have a few unique issues that come with the benefits. 

One of those is the need to maintain the tires. 

If you don’t maintain mud tires, will they make a truck shake?

Do Mud Tires Make Your Truck Shake?

Mud tires will cause a truck to shake when they are unevenly packed with mud and debris. This is because the weight of mud unbalances the tires. To test if the mud tires are causing a truck to shake, the driver should clean out the mud and pressure wash the wheel wells.

If this works, the tires should stop shaking and you should have a smooth ride in your truck. 

For more information on how to solve this problem, keep reading!

Will Mud Tires Cause Vibration?

Mud tires that are unevenly packed with mud can cause your truck to shake or vibrate.

The tires themselves shouldn’t be to blame unless they’ve warped or worn in a very weird way, but they can still pick up unwanted mud and debris that can cause a lot of problems down the road.

Why Do My Tires Make My Truck Shake?

A shaking truck is a problem that would leave anyone feeling on edge, and the last thing somebody wants to do is clean up mud when they’re mad, but that’s exactly what you’ll need to do.

Your tires are probably making your truck shake because the uneven weight of mud, snow, dirt, and debris is unbalancing the weight of the tire. 

This is pulling it off-center as you drive down the road, resulting in a bad ride for you and your truck. 

You don’t want an off-roading feeling while on a paved street.

The shaking may not have been a problem while you were actively off-roading because an even coating of mud leaves the tires balanced! If they’re well and truly coated in muck, there will be less shaking than if there is one single dirt clod left caught in the wheel.

It sounds a little strange, doesn’t it? Something built to put up with anything off-roading can throw at it can be taken out by a clump of dried mud. 

That dirt clod causes noise, vibrations in the tires, and shakes your whole truck. 

If you have uneven dirt on every tire, your truck might look like a dog with fleas driving down the road.

The good news is that this is an easy and cheap problem to fix.

You just need to clean out the tires!

How Do I Clean My Mud Tires?

Cleaning out your mud tires is the cheap and easy fix to your dancing-truck problem.

The question now is just how best to clean them!

Remember that if you hate mud, you can always take a page from your parents’ book and pay a neighborhood kid to clean out the mud from your tires. 

Just make sure you can trust them not to scratch your car.

Soak The Mud

This is an easy step that will simplify the rest of the cleaning process and save your truck some stress.

Just like when you soak a baked-on casserole dish in the sink, soaking the bottom of your car and your tires will make it easier for you to remove thick mud and dirt.

If you’re lucky, a lot of that mud might start falling off right away! If not, you can soak it with automotive soap to get things moving.

Manually Remove Excess Dirt

Get a scrub brush and start carefully knocking off some of those big dirt clumps.

It will make a nasty mess on your driveway, but that’s easy enough to clean off.

When properly soaked and covered in automotive soap, the dirt should be easy enough to clean off. 

Make sure to get all around the wheel to make sure it can properly balance again. 

Check inside the wheel well, in the rim, and in all the nooks and crannies.

It should go without saying, but be safe while checking all of this! Don’t get your hands pinched.

Hose Irrigation

If you need to get into a wheel well or something else that’s hard to reach, you can put the hose in to soak it well first.

This will make the mud easier to clean out and manage.

Try pulling the car forward after the hard-to-reach area has had a soak. 

That might free it up enough that you can clean it out more thoroughly.

Pressure Washing

If you have access to a pressure washer, congratulations on making it to the speedrun of car cleaning. 

While pressure washing is technically the exact opposite of mudding, it can be just as much fun and even more satisfying in the end.

Follow all safety rules when using the pressure washer! Wear full-length pants and close-toed shoes that offer full protection, and never put a body part in the stream.

Avoid paint chips in your truck because the pressure washer will take the paint right off if it catches that.

Pressure wash in all the corners, through the whole wheel well, in the tire tread, and anywhere else a clump of mud could be hiding that needs to be cleaned out

The pressure washer should handle it without any problem and will leave your truck cleaner than you’ve ever seen it.

However, you should never pressure wash your car. 

The water will remove the paint from your car and can cause dents to form in the metal. 

Use a regular hose instead of a pressure washer to clean your car.

Finishing With a Carwash

Don’t be the person that takes your completely mud-covered truck to the carwash. 

First, it won’t work right, and second, that’s grounds for being banned unless you know the place can handle it.

However, a carwash can be a good place for finishing touches. 

If you’ve gotten most of the mud, and you know your tires have been cleaned out enough that it should restore the balance, a car wash can bring back that shine and help soak hard-to-reach places on the bottom. 

Take advantage of this by getting a nice wash, then lean back and enjoy the ride.

If I Cleaned Out My Mud Tires, Why Is My Truck Still Shaking?

If your truck is still shaking once the mud tires are clean, you should bring it to a mechanic! You might have loose bolts or lug nuts, unbalanced tires, a cracked or broken axel, steering issues, or another serious problem that needs to be addressed by a professional. 

This isn’t something you can put off until later.