How to Use a Road Force Balancer

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This is an informative 8 minute video from Hunter Engineering about force matching, bead massaging, and dynamic balancing. It's a simple process, yet a lot of tire techs can't seem to get the job done properly. One tire tech wrote this comment: "I’m not doing all that. I just use the dsp 9000 on static mode."

 
I don't have time for tech's that have this attitude. I am DONE with people not performing the job they're being paid for.
If this is their attitude then GO HOME!
From now on, I only want RFB'ing on my tire/wheel pkg. I found a local installer that has a HUNTER 9000 RFB and I only go to him now. He has done me and several of my buddies right. He's our new guy!
 
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It's a simple process

That all depends on expectations.

Do you expect your tire installer to produce an acceptable road force value or do you expect the tire installer to produce the lowest possible road force value?

The system is designed to catch unacceptable road force measurements before the vehicle is given to a customer and comes back with a complaint.

The system is not designed to force match every tire, every time simple because a lower road force measurement can be attained. This is an absolute waste of everyone's time. Hunter would never sell a single one of these machines if their sales pitch were: You're going to spend more money on the machine, spend more time balancing tires, and can't charge your customers any more money because they'll never know the difference.

Nobody would buy that machine. The whole purpose is to prevent come-backs, which is what actually saves time and money.

95% of the time, the machine does the measurement, it shows up green, and the weights go on. That's what it means when an installer says he "Road Force Balanced" your tires. Really no different than any other install.

5% of the time, it'll show up yellow or red and the tire gets rotated to the marked position, like the video shows. Maybe that's 5% fewer customer com-backs. That's the benefit of the machine and how shops measure its value.

There are times when it shows up green with, like, 8 pounds of road force measured but the machine says if you were to force match, it'd go down to 4 pounds. This is a waste of time. It'd be like teeing off and landing the ball 12 inches from the pin, but taking a mulligan and teeing off again because maybe you could land it 6 inches instead. 12 inches is still an easy 1-putt and there's no reason to do it over.

I've been around Hunter's balancers (and other equipment) in a professional and OE capacity since the GSP9700 was introduced in 2000.
 
Allow me to add a few more thoughts that MrHorsepower missed.

Busting tires is hard work for very little pay. Anyone with a brain tends to find another job. Plus, it's a bit difficult to comprehend that the tire is not actually being balanced in spite of the fact that it is called RoadForce Balancing. (To be more precise, the "RoadForce" part isn't actually balancing, but balancing does take place during the procedure).

Plus it takes time. The machine operator sees absolutely no benefit from running the long procedure. The benefit is to the store manager and store owner - fewer comebacks.

And as has been said, Match mounting is only needed 5% of the time. For some people that is enough to ignore.

There is good news in this. Tire manufacturers have been gradually making tires better and the era of stiffening chassis's is over. (Stiffening chassis's means that the vehicle is much more sensitive to tire vibrations.) At some point, the benefit for a tire shop to have a RFB machine is going to disappear.
 
....The system is designed to catch unacceptable road force measurements before the vehicle is given to a customer and comes back with a complaint
What is an "unacceptable road force measurement"? 25lb? 15lb? How does a shop decide what is acceptable?
For my vehicle, a RF value of 13lb would be felt as a vibration in the steering wheel. But if the shop has the RF threshold set at 16lb or higher I will be told the tire is OK because the machine said so.

...Do you expect your tire installer to produce an acceptable road force value or do you expect the tire installer to produce the lowest possible road force value?
I want the latter, and I am willing to pay for the extra 15 minutes of labor to break the bead and rotate the tire on the wheel.
 
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I've had bad experiences in the past with shops charging me for a Road Force balance but not even using the RF feature on the machine. Finally found a custom import shop that charged a pretty penny but actually did the job correctly.

I was traveling recently and went to a Discount Tire that only had RF balancers. For 45 min, I looked through the waiting room glass into the shop area and saw the rollers coming down onto the tires as they were being balanced so it appears the RF feature was actually being used. But.... it was like a zoo in there. Techs were zipping around doing other tasks without even watching the tires on the balancer. If the machine did find a high RF value or made an alert about match-mounting being needed, I doubt anyone made the effort of following through. They were just slapping on wheel weights, re-installing the wheels and it was wam-bam goodbye ma'am.
 
What's a shop going to charge to mount and balance a tire on those $20,000 machines to recoupe their investment? $50 a tire? My 20 year old tire machine and hand crank balancer will get 95% of those results and not cost me anything.
Just payed $40/tire…….Indy Tire shop. I’m a stickler for no vibrations from the steering wheel when at speed so well worth it.
 
I have had my own Hunter RF balancer for years, and the balancers works great. The road force gives you lots of information that can sometimes be useful. On my C5 Corvette the front tires are over 42 pounds of road-force, but they run smooth at 120mph. I tried to index them on the wheels, but the wheels have zero run-out so it wouldn't matter where I indexed the tires. It takes a lot of time trying to chase it around, and many times I've tried it to get numbers lower on other cars and it got worse and had to spend even more time going back to where I started. I have never had a comeback on many of the tires I balanced with high numbers. Balancing tires in the fine-mode setup on the machine works best with the proper cone, and pin-plates to center the wheel on balancer shaft. Most of the time the road force doesn't seem that critical and I've seen cheap tires with very low numbers with visible run-out, and expensive tires with high numbers with no visible run-out, and no complaints. Some tires you would need a bent wheel to get a low number.
 

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Just payed $40/tire…….Indy Tire shop. I’m a stickler for no vibrations from the steering wheel when at speed so well worth it.

I have had my own Hunter RF balancer for years, and the balancers works great. The road force gives you lots of information that can sometimes be useful. On my C5 Corvette the front tires are over 42 pounds of road-force, but they run smooth at 120mph. I tried to index them on the wheels, but the wheels have zero run-out so it wouldn't matter where I indexed the tires. It takes a lot of time trying to chase it around, and many times I've tried it to get numbers lower on other cars and it got worse and had to spend even more time going back to where I started. I have never had a comeback on many of the tires I balanced with high numbers. Balancing tires in the fine-mode setup on the machine works best with the proper cone, and pin-plates to center the wheel on balancer shaft. Most of the time the road force doesn't seem that critical and I've seen cheap tires with very low numbers with visible run-out, and expensive tires with high numbers with no visible run-out, and no complaints. Some tires you would need a bent wheel to get a low number.
42 pounds and smooth... I had two tires that had around 23 each and they vibrated on my Honda.. They remounted the tire and was able to get them down to 12 each and the vibration was gone...I was told that anything under 22 is good and under 10 is great...
 
What is an "unacceptable road force measurement"? 25lb? 15lb? How does a shop decide what is acceptable?
For my vehicle, a RF value of 13lb would be felt as a vibration in the steering wheel. But if the shop has the RF threshold set at 16lb or higher I will be told the tire is OK because the machine said so.


I want the latter, and I am willing to pay for the extra 15 minutes of labor to break the bead and rotate the tire on the wheel.
There are different RF limits depending on the application whether it is passenger or light truck.
 
The only time you might feel a road-force vibration would be on the rare freshly blacktopped road. Many of the concrete highways I've driven on, that is usually more of the issue for vibration. Many of the roads seem to develop a once per revolution hop from trucks, etc. bouncing down the road, which is what drives me crazy.
 
A couple of thoughts:

Some places in this world have roads that are so bumpy that it's hard to pick out tire related vibrations. These places are usually where the winter causes freezing and thawing of the road surface.

And then there are places that the road stays smooth and unbumpy (Is that a word?) - and those places are where the weather hardly ever gets freezing - like Florida. Those of us in the tire business know that most of our ride complaints come from those areas.

Then there's the issue of vehicle sensitivity. Generally, the smaller the vehicle the more sensitive it is. The good news is that small tires are easier to build than large ones, so it works out.

Then there is the sensitivity of the driver.

What all this means is that the value you need to get from a RoadForce Machine so the ride is smooth varies all over the ballpark. The built in limits are sometimes too tight and sometimes too loose. It just depends. Many operators don't understand that and take the built in limits as gospel.
 
.... On my C5 Corvette the front tires are over 42 pounds of road-force, but they run smooth at 120mph.
Are you 100% sure your Hunter machine is still in calibration and giving accurate data? It is very hard to believe that a RF value of 42lb would not be felt on the front end of a Corvette. Did you check it again after a few runs at 120mph?
 
I don't have time for tech's that have this attitude. I am DONE with people not performing the job they're being paid for.
If this is their attitude then GO HOME!
From now on, I only want RFB'ing on my tire/wheel pkg. I found a local installer that has a HUNTER 9000 RFB and I only go to him now. He has done me and several of my buddies right. He's our new guy!
Are you ok paying twice as much? Because if you have to move all 4 tires around looking for lowest # it takes about twice as long, esp with newer low profile stuff. We offer it at work as an upcharge , and 99%+ are not interested.
 
The force match isn’t always right. You can start at an unacceptable road force, it’ll tell you where to move the tire after checking rim runout.

Ok, move the tire (at least 5 minutes of work, if you’re doing this on tires that weren’t just mounted, maybe a minimum of 10 minutes to deflate, break beads, lube beads so you can actually turn the tire on the wheel).

Re-inflate and seat bead (usually no problem, but sometimes it is, sometimes you need the cheetah bead blaster, a whole ‘nother pain in the rear)

Put them on the balancer, recheck road force. Guess what, you moved it perfect and matched where it said to, but now your road force is worse. This happens more often than you’d like to believe. Or, you did all that work, and your road force was supposed to reduce to an acceptable level (I think we used 14 or so lbs for passenger tires, but I’ve been away from the real repair world for 10 years now) after moving the tire, you still aren’t at an acceptable level.

In both cases, the machine is still telling you that you can force match and get acceptable results. So you hustle to do it again. This time should be easier, but it still sucks.

Maybe it’ll actually be acceptable this time, usually it isn’t. If it doesn’t get to an acceptable level the first move, you’re usually chasing your tail and it never gets to an acceptable level.

You are a flat rate tech who is getting paid about 1 hour to mount and balance 4 tires.

  • You had to go find the car
  • bring it in
  • lift it
  • you should be shaking it down before you remove the wheels to make sure its suspension and steering are good
  • removing the wheels
  • bringing them to the tire area
  • going to parts department and getting your tires
  • bringing them to the tire room
  • dismounting / valve stems if replaceable / and mounting
  • I always calibrated the balancer before balancing, as about 20 of us used the equipment, I didn’t trust that someone didn’t jolt it or let tires fly into it and throw it off a bit.
  • balancing and potentially adjusting tire positions based on road force results
  • placing wheel weights and balancing
  • putting old tires in storage
  • moving tires and wheels back to the vehicle
  • installing them
  • putting the vehicle down
  • test driving it
  • parking it
  • recording your work on the repair order
We got paid 1.2 hours for 4 tires. Customers couldn’t understand being charged more when the balancer wanted us ti adjust road force. They also couldn’t understand paying more than the listed “menu” price to have a vibration addressed by road force balancing tires. They can see it costs “$xx” to install 4 tires, in anyone’s head, the tires are already installed, so a road force balance should be less than simply installing tires, right?

Just giving you a glimpse as to why it’s a pain to get even a good tech to want to do a good job on tires. 90% of customers won’t notice, so they let it fly and hope it doesn’t come back. We never even had the roller come down and apply road force to 95% of tire jobs if I had to guess.
 
When you have tires that weigh 80+ pounds each, road force balancing is a must. One of the DT stores here in Colorado Springs has a road force machine and the difference between it and the machine at the other DT store is night and day.

I went back to the non RF store 4 times and they still could not get the balance correct. The RF store got it right the first time.
 
The force match isn’t always right. You can start at an unacceptable road force, it’ll tell you where to move the tire after checking rim runout.

Ok, move the tire (at least 5 minutes of work, if you’re doing this on tires that weren’t just mounted, maybe a minimum of 10 minutes to deflate, break beads, lube beads so you can actually turn the tire on the wheel).

Re-inflate and seat bead (usually no problem, but sometimes it is, sometimes you need the cheetah bead blaster, a whole ‘nother pain in the rear)

Put them on the balancer, recheck road force. Guess what, you moved it perfect and matched where it said to, but now your road force is worse. This happens more often than you’d like to believe. Or, you did all that work, and your road force was supposed to reduce to an acceptable level (I think we used 14 or so lbs for passenger tires, but I’ve been away from the real repair world for 10 years now) after moving the tire, you still aren’t at an acceptable level.

In both cases, the machine is still telling you that you can force match and get acceptable results. So you hustle to do it again. This time should be easier, but it still sucks.

Maybe it’ll actually be acceptable this time, usually it isn’t. If it doesn’t get to an acceptable level the first move, you’re usually chasing your tail and it never gets to an acceptable level.

You are a flat rate tech who is getting paid about 1 hour to mount and balance 4 tires.

  • You had to go find the car
  • bring it in
  • lift it
  • you should be shaking it down before you remove the wheels to make sure its suspension and steering are good
  • removing the wheels
  • bringing them to the tire area
  • going to parts department and getting your tires
  • bringing them to the tire room
  • dismounting / valve stems if replaceable / and mounting
  • I always calibrated the balancer before balancing, as about 20 of us used the equipment, I didn’t trust that someone didn’t jolt it or let tires fly into it and throw it off a bit.
  • balancing and potentially adjusting tire positions based on road force results
  • placing wheel weights and balancing
  • putting old tires in storage
  • moving tires and wheels back to the vehicle
  • installing them
  • putting the vehicle down
  • test driving it
  • parking it
  • recording your work on the repair order
We got paid 1.2 hours for 4 tires. Customers couldn’t understand being charged more when the balancer wanted us ti adjust road force. They also couldn’t understand paying more than the listed “menu” price to have a vibration addressed by road force balancing tires. They can see it costs “$xx” to install 4 tires, in anyone’s head, the tires are already installed, so a road force balance should be less than simply installing tires, right?

Just giving you a glimpse as to why it’s a pain to get even a good tech to want to do a good job on tires. 90% of customers won’t notice, so they let it fly and hope it doesn’t come back. We never even had the roller come down and apply road force to 95% of tire jobs if I had to guess.
This is why I insist on getting the RF results from the shop.

If they're not to my liking, I send any new tires back (which I ordered online in the first place). Since I always have at least two sets per car (winter/non-winter), I always have at least one that drives smooth. If anyone tries to gaslight me into thinking it's my suspension, I say nope, I have a perfectly good set over here that drives fine. Helps me stick to my guns.

If it really hits the fan, BBB is your friend.
 
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