A Little FYI on Tire Balance

[rkgzx9leftcoast]

Just a little story from my recent experience on having tires re balanced. I have about 6k on my Ridge grapplers. 37/12.50/17. I rotated them a while ago, but didnt re-balance at the time, they were pretty good, nothing that noticeable so I figured I could wait a while. I finally had it done this past Saturday, called around to see if anyone had Road Force Machine, Discount seemed to be the only one. I asked them to do Road Force Balance.... not sure if thats what they did or not as I didn't watch them do it. Long story short I picked up truck and didnt drive much over the weekend, on way back and forth to work this week noticed bad vibration/shake at 60 to 65 MPH and worse on deceleration. Was not there before.

I didnt trust them to re-balance, so I took it to a shop I know this morning that actually mounted/balanced the tires originally. They have a Coats Machine and his guy knows what he is doing... He said they had a bunch of extra weight on each rim, up to 5oz, he thought to try and split the weight.... well... truck rides like a Cadillac, no shake, shimmy or vibration to speak of..... I should have just taken it back to his shop to begin with, but wanted to try Road Force... like I said I dont know if Discount did a Road Force, or correctly? if thats what they did.

[cb1987]

if you had no vibration I don't see why you would bother with a road force. usually it cost a lot more also. I had some new tires and wheels and one of them was giving me bad vibration. went to a local shop and they found one 9oz off. did the roadforce and pinpointed the exact spot. dismounted and rotated tire about 180* on the wheel. was only about 2-3oz balanced it out. trucks rides great now. original tire shop that mounted everything was complete morons

[2wagons1driveway]

Hmm run toyos and trail ready bead locks. No vibration up to 105mph 37" tires. Zero weights inside tire or on wheel.


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[rkgzx9leftcoast]

Yeah, I have heard that it is possible to run bead locks and Toyos, with no weight inside or out. It has to do with quality of Wheel, and Tires. Toyos are probably the best. Trail Ready`s, or Innov8 wheels I have seen done that way. On getting mine balanced I had it done originally when I put the Ridge Grapplers with stock Rims. I think the Ridge Grapplers are close to the Toyos, but maybe not as perfect.

I have seen a lot of guys who claim to get more miles out of tires say they Rotate them and re balance at intervals, so I figured id try it, everyone talks about Road Force Balance as a better way..... It really depends, like most things, on who is doing it. Like I said I tried something, it didnt work... I had it re done correctly after that with the guys who put the tires on for me, they have a Coates Machine which is supposed to be pretty good. The guy who re-balanced said he took a bunch of weight off when he re-did. I can tell you for a fact that if your combo is balanced incorrectly it can definitely give you a shake at speed, and make you think its something else......

I think that the bigger tires can be run without balance if its a good quality tire, but in bigger sizes I do think any combination can benefit from a balance. I understand most places wont touch Bead-Locks, so it is what it is. I am thinking of switching to Trail ready bead locks at some point, and I have a place that will balance bead locks if I want to go that route.

[2wagons1driveway]

I used to road force balance my own tires then gave up on it as I didn't see a big difference.

I believe if the road force is out that bad it creates a slapping motion in the tire cause a portion of the tire to wear out of round if they ever get that bad I imagine it would be very noticeable in the wheel and cab though.

If my truck ever does have a wheel vibe it's usually through the rear end as the extra travel/ softer leafs tend to transmit a bit more energy into the suspension than say a solid mounted rear end would...


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