Just curious what everyone with a 997 uses as a rule of thumb for how often to balance their wheels and do 4 wheel alignment.

Tire shops will say to balance wheels every 5k miles and alignment every 10k miles, but is this overkill? I'm at 10k miles/1 year since a high-speed balance/alignment and have no issues with vibration/tire wear/center-on steering...what do you guys think?

 

For me, I only Align or balance at the sign of A problem. Anything else is a waste of money.

 

It depends, do you track your car?

If not, you do not need it that frequently... I track so it is necessary for me to do it every 3 months or so

 

Just an occasional auto-X but not tracking the car these days. Maybe a stupid question - but why do you have to balance so frequently for track?

I figure with the short life span of Michelin PS2s, there may not really be much need for balancing/aligment for street driving except when getting new tires.

 

Not stupid at all, for regular street driving you do not need to get your car aligned so many times. But once you start tracking your car, the suspension components move or change position from the stress you put on them by driving hard.

You also need to balance your wheels and tires more often because the tire wear is accelerated and also the weights move around or may even fall because of the excess heat.

 

I'm finding once a year is a must. Might be more.
I drive my car seasonally since I live in MN. I just had an alignment done and it was pretty far off following about 4,000 street miles and three track days last season.

Alignment is cheap and the car feels great when it's fresh.

 

Approximately 3 months or less...

With my car the mileage is lower but the track days are higher, which actually puts more strain on the parts and screws the alignment.