Am I overthinking getting my new tires balanced properly?

[wjm52358]

I'm going to buy new tires at Tire Rack soon, and have them installed at a Discount Tire location with the Hunter RF Balancer. Is there are particular value that I want to see for road force and radial runout? Vehicle is a 2015 Tacoma with 265/70/16 tires.

Is it unreasonable to expect a tired and overworked Discount Tire employee to be able to print out the radial runout and road force values? It seems like getting them balanced correctly is a crapshoot. There are also local businesses that have the Hunter machine and I might have more success with getting an accurate balance from them, but they do a lot of other car work too and I suspect the employees won't have any more time to spend on it.

I'm not concerned with performance, but I did pick tires that should handle NVH better than most, and I'm not spending over a thousand bucks to have them installed wrong.

 

[Duckless]

Just out of curiosity, why not have discount buy the tires with a price match? They probably aren't even different prices considering Discount bought Tire Rack. Or vice versa, I don't remember.

 

[andyd]

Make an appointment. I went to the web site of a local Town Fair Tire. I chose a set of some brand I nevr heard of before and can't remember now. 205 65 16s for my 2016 Camry They were the 3rd cheapest. Store opens at 8AM, I asked for a 9 AM. 1hr and 10minutes of reading my latest book and I was outta there. Judging from the even wear on the take offs, no alignment needed. Just balancing. The ride is fine, I feel less slippery in the rain. Ehhh it's an 9 yr old Camry. Even so, franchises are hit or miss, the one in Plymouth is a hit

 

[meep]

I’ve used 2 discount tire locations and have found their mount and balance to be consistently more trustworthy than anywhere else I’ve gone. One store here is so well known that people drive here from out of state (an hour) to visit them. I’ve had … I’m going to guess … 5 sets myself, and directed 2 other folks there with nothing but good experiences. At the moment, they are my go-to.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Discount would not print them out for me but they did write them down. They are what they are unless there out of spec. Not much you can do.

 

[Hermann]

My Discount Tire location has been perfect since they arrived in town about 15 years ago. Make an appointment. It greases the process to help it move smoothly.

 

[CapriRacer]

To the OP:

My advice would be to leave well enough alone and just let the tire busters do their job. In all likelihood, there aren't going to be any problems - and if there are problems, it'll be with Tire Rack, not Discount Tire.

So for everyone else, allow me to explain what is going on.

Everyone here should be familiar with static balancing taking care of the up/down balancing situation, and dynamic balance taking care of the side-to-side, wobble - and that both are what normally happens with a spin balance.

What people may be unfamiliar with is Road Force balancing, which isn't balancing at all. It's match mounting where the low point of runout of the wheel is lined up with the Uniformity (a combination of tire run out and sidewall stiffness) high point of the tire. The net is a rounder assembly. Assemblies can be perfectly balanced, but out-of-round and vice versa.

Wheels nowadays are generally pretty round, and generally tires are pretty uniform. If there is a problem, it will be with tire uniformity - and the point of Road Force balancing is to, perhaps, make a vibrating assembly not vibrate. The alternative is to replace the tire with, perhaps, a tire with lower uniformity.

 

[wjm52358]

To the OP:

My advice would be to leave well enough alone and just let the tire busters do their job. In all likelihood, there aren't going to be any problems - and if there are problems, it'll be with Tire Rack, not Discount Tire.

So for everyone else, allow me to explain what is going on.

Everyone here should be familiar with static balancing taking care of the up/down balancing situation, and dynamic balance taking care of the side-to-side, wobble - and that both are what normally happens with a spin balance.

What people may be unfamiliar with is Road Force balancing, which isn't balancing at all. It's match mounting where the low point of runout of the wheel is lined up with the Uniformity (a combination of tire run out and sidewall stiffness) high point of the tire. The net is a rounder assembly. Assemblies can be perfectly balanced, but out-of-round and vice versa.

Wheels nowadays are generally pretty round, and generally tires are pretty uniform. If there is a problem, it will be with tire uniformity - and the point of Road Force balancing is to, perhaps, make a vibrating assembly not vibrate. The alternative is to replace the tire with, perhaps, a tire with lower uniformity.

I made an appointment with Discount Tire. What values do I want for road force and runout? I would assume I care about radial runout and not lateral, right? I just want to be able to refuse the tires in case they're really out of spec.

 

[Jimmy_Russells]

The RF values don't matter at all if it doesn't vibrate.

 

[OFFRD]

Don't know where you live, but my experience in Kentucky has been that Discount Tire stores do the best job at balancing my large Jeep and pickup truck tires. By large I mean 33 to 35" variety. 99% of the time they get it dialed in first try. No other shops in my area can hold a candle to them. I've always assumed, but can't prove, that the reason is because Discount Tire does a better job of routinely calibrating their machines and they train their employees better.

So, I will typically make the 1 hour drive to Louisville when I need tires solely because I want to get it balanced perfect the first time. Saves me time in the long run.

 

[wjm52358]

Discount would not print them out for me but they did write them down. They are what they are unless there out of spec. Not much you can do.

Which numbers did you request?

 

[CapriRacer]

I made an appointment with Discount Tire. What values do I want for road force and runout? I would assume I care about radial runout and not lateral, right? I just want to be able to refuse the tires in case they're really out of spec.

There are 3 things that affect your ability to pickup up vibrations:

1) The sensitivity of the vehicle. Some vehicles are very sensitive and some are very insensitive, and I don't know of anyone who has catalogued such a thing.
2) The roughness of the roads the vehicle will be operating on. Rough roads can disguise a vibration.
3). The sensitivity of the person involved. Some people have very insensitive butts - others, not so much.

So there isn't an answer. My suggestion is just to let them do their thing and if you feel a vibration afterwards, then start taking steps to fix it. It might be a good idea to request the road force values. Any outliers are a good place to start if there is a problem.

 

[z71bill]

Ask them to use the yellow dot on the sidewall-

Yellow dot should be right by the valve stem on the wheel

 

[ProbeGT]

I'm going to buy new tires at Tire Rack soon, and have them installed at a Discount Tire location with the Hunter RF Balancer. Is there are particular value that I want to see for road force and radial runout? Vehicle is a 2015 Tacoma with 265/70/16 tires.

I understand your concern. I went through several sets of tires that were impossible to balance. Word of warning, buying tires online makes warranty claims super difficult if not impossible, yes, even in your scenario. Having had nothing but headaches with TireRack, DiscountTireDirect, DiscountTire, PepBoys, Firestone tirecenter and GoodYear tirecenter, I finally settled on my local Walmart tirecenter as the best place to buy and install tires. No drama, good service and super smooth ride. YMMV of course.

To the OP:

My advice would be to leave well enough alone and just let the tire busters do their job. In all likelihood, there aren't going to be any problems - and if there are problems, it'll be with Tire Rack, not Discount Tire.

This is bad advice. Get the roadforce balance and document, document, document. If your tires shake, you will need to submit the RF values as evidence for warranty. Every tire manufacturer has different warranty requirements. General (=Continental) says any tire with RF reading of 18 lbs or less is "good." This is complete nonsense, even tires with 10lbs RF shake my front end violently, but it's their "standard". OEMs of course have much stricter standards and do not accept any wheel assembly from suppliers with RF over 2lbs.

Ask them to use the yellow dot on the sidewall-
Yellow dot should be right by the valve stem on the wheel

Most tires these days only have a red dot. There are conflicting opinions about how the red dot should be lined up on the rim. Discount tire employees could not agree amongst themselves. It doesn't seem to matter. A well made tire won't care and a poorly made tire will remain way out of balance even after remounting with the dot on the other side of the rim.

 

[CapriRacer]

There is much wrong with this post, so I'm going to parse it and address only those things that need addressing. Just for reference, I am a retired tire engineer who used to work in the warranty department for a major tire manufacturer.

This is bad advice. Get the roadforce balance and document, document, document. If your tires shake, you will need to submit the RF values as evidence for warranty.

Tire manufacturers routinely accept warranty returns for vibration without RoadForce documentation. They may actually measure the returned tire(s), and deny warranty if the values are too low, but the value they use is extremely low. This is done to prevent dealers from accepting vibration warranties without at least investigating a bit.

Every tire manufacturer has different warranty requirements. General (=Continental) says any tire with RF reading of 16 lbs or less is "good." This is complete nonsense, even tires with 10lbs RF shake my front end violently, but it's their "standard". OEMs of course do not accept any wheel assembly from suppliers with RF over 2lbs.

I don't know of a tire manufacturer who has a RoadForce spec. And all INTERNAL uniformity specs are closely guarded secrets.

And the OEM specs for tires is way more than 2#. The tires and wheels do have to be marked, though, and they are matched up at the vehicle assembly plant.

Most tires these days only have a red dot. There are conflicting opinions about how the red dot should be lined up on the rim. Discount tire employees could not agree amongst themselves. It doesn't seem to matter. A well made tire won't care and a poorly made tire will remain way out of balance even after remounting with the dot on the other side of the rim.

Rims aren't standardized with the valve stem meaning anything, so matching any tire dots to the valve hole is the same as a random match. Way back when, it was true that some OEM's marked the low point with the valve hole, but that was over 20 years ago, and not all the OEM's did that.

 

[ProbeGT]

There is much wrong with this post, so I'm going to parse it and address only those things that need addressing. Just for reference, I am a retired tire engineer who used to work in the warranty department for a major tire manufacturer.

Everything I posted is 100% accurate and based on my personal experience with doing a recent warranty claim on a set of General GMAX AS-03 tires. Perhaps you've been retired too long. Reality has changed.

Tire manufacturers routinely accept warranty returns for vibration without RoadForce documentation. They may actually measure the returned tire(s), and deny warranty if the values are too low, but the value they use is extremely low. This is done to prevent dealers from accepting vibration warranties without at least investigating a bit.

This is absolutely and demonstrably false. I went through a warrantly claim at an authorized Continental/General tire dealer. I listened to the dealer's telephone conversation with Continental warranty department. They required RF measurements, no exceptions. See the annotated RF measurements from the dealer. The circled 18 denotes the acceptable RF value by Continental. Based on the RF measurements, Continental only agreed to replace the 2nd tire which measured 20lbs RF. I was stuck with the other 3 tires that "only" measured 16 or less RF. They were all vibrating junk.

BTW, I am now running GoodYear Reliant tires on the exact same rims and they're perfectly smooth with zero vibrations at any speed.

I don't know of a tire manufacturer who has a RoadForce spec. And all INTERNAL uniformity specs are closely guarded secrets.
And the OEM specs for tires is way more than 2#. The tires and wheels do have to be marked, though, and they are matched up at the vehicle assembly plant.

This is all absolutely false, too. Continental's limit for direct-to-customer sales is 18 lbs of RF, confirmed by the dealer and directly by Continental. In the thread above, I posted more links to documents with specific RF values.

EDIT: I found the 2 invoices for the General tire warranty. FYI, I still had to pay for installation for the 1 warrantied tire and disposal of the bad tire.

 

[tblt44]

If some of us could do our own balancing we would spend hrs getting it perfect for the best ride.
Unfortunately there in the business for speed, if it's in spec even at the top good enough.
Same with alignments good enough even if it could be better.

 

[D1dad]

If possible, I always get road force out of the gate. When I’ve done that, I’ve never had issues for the tire life. My Bridgestones, to good of a deal to pass up from Walmart. Have been balanced everytime I rotate them. Someday they’ll get them perfect.

 

[wjm52358]

Had it done this morning. I had them write down the road force values, and I ended up with 24 and 25 on the back tires. Life is too short to demand that they redo it unless some vibration ends up bugging me.

I had Continental TerrainContact H/Ts installed, so it seems mine would be slightly out of spec. It's a truck and I don't drive much, so I'll see how it is next time I'm on the highway.

 

[rstcso]

I recently bought a set of tires at Discount Tire. whom I've used for many years. I watched as they did the balance and road force test. Two of the four failed the RF, but the guy doing the balance said it was close enough, and started to put the tires on the car. I went and had a chat with one of the assistant managers who came out and did all four tires again. After breaking down those not in spec and remounting them, one was still out of RF spec. It wasn't a tire they stocked, so he ordered one for the next day.

The next day before doing anything, the same manager went through Hunter's field calibration process using a different machine. This took 5-10 minutes, which is an eternity for Discount Tire. He proceeded to rebalance all four wheels, and the one that he ordered the tire for, had a RF value of 13. The other three needed their weights to be moved to different locations, but all four checked good on RF. I didn't ask for the tire he ordered to be installed, since I saw that it passed. It's been about a month now, and things are going pretty good.