Road Force Balancing - HELP

[Mynameisluke88]

Hey,

I had my Merc C Class checked on the Road Force Balancer yesterday, the garage recommended two new front tyres however, I currently have continental run flats with really good tread and I want to swap them out for non run flats in the long run so want to try and wear these out first.

I am having issues with a shake / bounce in the steering at 65mph +. The shop balanced the wheels but hasn’t made any amendments to the tyre rotation. The balancing has definitely helped but I was hoping to eliminate the shake all together.

I have attached the copies of the print offs from the shop. I am planning on going back today in the hope paying for them to rotate the front tyres might help..

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Hunter Road Force balancing isn’t very common here in the UK so it’s quite difficult to find guidance on what adjustments change what..

Thank you!

 

[ZeeOSix]

Did they also check the wheel and tire radial run-out? If there's run-out, no type of balancing will fix tire shake. If they have a fancy road force balance machine like that, I'd think they would first check wheel/tire run-out before balancing.

 

[CapriRacer]

Luke,

I don't think you are going to fix this without changing tires. The values are too big. The only thing you could do would be to swap the front tires with the rears - and (another guess), you have a staggered fitment and can't!

AND I think you have another problem - alignment! Specifically front toe! Particularly if the problem gradually got worse over time.

UNLESS:

This problem came up suddenly, then it could be the wheels are out of round because they are damaged. My guess is the shop measured the runout of the wheels and they are OK.

It's also possible the shop didn't measure the wheel runout, but I thought that was standard procedure on the newer Hunter Machines. I could be wrong about that.

 

[Kalle.J]

Road force is not magic, can help in some cases, especially with new tyres. But that's way too much. Worn tyres that had imbalance and bad alignment are often junk.
I spent way to much on roadforce for summer and winter set. Should just have spent that on alignment and new tyres.

 

[Patrick0525]

My Toyota Venza is less sensitive to RoadForce but you want to be less than 10#. What values did u get? Also u want to get them to do RoadForce matching where they rotate the tire on the rim for the lowest possy obtainable value. Time consuming.

In 2019, one of my new tires was defective and it would have not been picked up using standard spin balancing. The tire seller sent another replacement tire. RoadForce balancing does make a significant and it like u are riding on a maglev train.

Hunter Force Measurements

Had the dealer mount my new General RT43 Tires on my 245-50-20 Toyota OE alloys that has never seen a Northeast winter. I am disappointed with one tire that has generated 36 lbs of force. It took a 45g or 1.6 oz and a 10g or .35 oz weights. They moved the red flag tire to the passenger rear...

bobistheoilguy.com

 

[SC Maintenance]

Road force is checking the run-out, of the assembly - ie how true to round everything is.

Could be the rim. Not likely with those, the road force looks massive for the two bad ones. The other two aren't great either.

They should have tried to rotate them on the rim to see if that improved things much. My guess is with those numbers it won't, which is likely why they didn't bother, but technically they should have at least tried.

If your tire is out of round, there is no cure except a new tire.

 

[Craig in Canada]

Even with road force, nothing is actually balanced. It is just good enough not to notice. Worn out ball joints and bushings in the front end will amplify the inevitable imbalance which remains. The full suspension should be inspected to confirm everything is tight. Most German sedans have a thrust arm/traction strut/tension strut bushing which is prone to "early" failure, soft and liquid filled for that comfy, cozy ride everyone seems to want. When that lets go, it vibrates at speeds like this.

 

[DuckRyder]

What's the unit of measure on that because 60 US Pounds being green is outrageous.

Question - did they actually try "OEM Match"? Or did they just measure the road force?

 

[krzyss]

I suspect that units are Newtons. SI unit for the force measurement.
No Google guess is 5N for 1 lb force.
1 lb =. 0.454 kg
1 kg = 9.81N

Now let me google it.

Krzyś

PS Per Google it is 4.44822