Tire balancing no longer needed per tire rep

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Black_Thunder

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Ok first off I work at a trucking company and recently they had a rep come in for Michelin tires and Michelin swears that heavy truck tires no longer need to be balanced and they will wear fine.....

I obviously disagree with this as I have been mounting tires since High School.

So if truck tires no longer need balancing.....why do Car tires?

Because the vehicle will drive like [censored] and the tire warranty will be void thats why.

The high ups in management have bought that load of [censored] of course.

but a brand new semi-truck from the dealer will have wheel weights on every tire, then when the tire is changed the weights are knocked off and a new tire goes on unbalanced.


Thoughts on this? Is there anyone else here that works in the truck industry thats heard stuff like this?
 
Heavy truck does not equal passenger car. Can't say I've ever seen balancing weights on a heavy truck rim.

I thought they put some water or beads in there for a dynamic balance?
 
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Heavy truck does not equal passenger car. Can't say I've ever seen balancing weights on a heavy truck rim.

I thought they put some water or beads in there for a dynamic balance?


A lot of places do use dynamic balancing beads in the tires. However, it's entirely possible to actually balance the tires as well (dynamic balancing works fine for highway running, but not so well in stop and go situations as it takes a few seconds for the tire to come into balance after getting moving).
 
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Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Heavy truck does not equal passenger car. Can't say I've ever seen balancing weights on a heavy truck rim.

I thought they put some water or beads in there for a dynamic balance?



Owner operators may put in Equal powder or some variant.

the problem with some of the new truck is they have the TPMS system and powder or liquid in the tire would wreck the sensors and plug up the valve stems
 
Originally Posted By: Chris142
No truck i ever drove had balanced tires. Didnt effect the ride any that i could tell.



Drivers do come into the shop occasionally with a vibration in the front end/steer wheel.


in the past we did balance the tire/wheel on the hub on the truck with beeline equipment which was a whole ordeal by itself, but if you were patient you could get the wheel balanced and the truck would indeed ride better.

drive tires are generally not balanced at all but if they do get irregular wear they are known to cause vibrations as well.
 
If a 15" car tire vibrates at 50 MPH would a 22.5" truck tire do it at some speed over the speed limit where it doesn't really matter?
 
My old 40s and 50s pick ups with typically 6.50 16 tube type bias plies never shimmied from out of balance tires. Maybe it had something to do with the leaf spring suspensions.
 
Nothing new about this. Been SOP in the RV industry for years. The key is the size. Size matters. Big RV, big rig trucks. Those tires don't get up to the rpm of smaller stuff.

You doubters - think outside the box. Don't go with your first instinct. Do you think a tractor tire or and earth moving tire has ever been balanced?
 
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I think car rims and tires are much more precisely made these days. They are more true and round and the weight is uniform. Same goes for modern aluminum rims.

Balancing is not as big a deal as it used to be. I haven't bothered to get my tires balanced on the old vette for about 15 years. And the new 17 inch wheels and tires are very true.
 
A number of thoughts:

I've dealt with my share of tire salesmen and as a group I am thoroughly impressed with their technical knowledge ............. NOT!!!

I don't now where they come from, but in my neck of the woods, you don't spout stuff you haven't cleared with the technical authorities FIRST. The fact that Michelin still mentions balancing in some of their literature ought to be a clue to avoid this person's opinions in the future. What may be going on is that the rep thinks (or has been told) that Michelin tires are SOOOOO good that they sometimes don't need balancing at all - AND - if he can convince the trucking company executives to eliminate balancing, then the Michelin rep thinks that eliminates the other tire manufacturers from getting in there.

Personally, I'm not buying it.

The difference between balancing on cars and balancing on trucks? This is more about the vehicles than the tires. Every suspension has a natural resonant frequency. In cars, the natural resonant frequency is in the 50 to 70 mph range. I don't know what that speed it is for trucks, but because the spring rates are much much higher in trucks than cars, that speed is out of reach. So I can see that - perhaps - balancing might not be necessary all the time for over the road truck tires.

I would think that if balancing truck tires was NEVER necessary, then all the related stuff (balancing equipment, balancing beads, etc.) would never have existed to begin with. And if things have gotten so much better that the need is no longer there, that these things would eventually dry up and no longer be available. Since this equipment is still available, I would think that there is still a need.

I am not a fan of balancing beads, liquids, or what-not. Obviously when the tire is at rest the stuff doesn't balance anything because centrifugal force is what is needed to make the stuff work. But at what speed is there enough centrifugal force to overcome the force of gravity to the point where the tire and wheel assembly benefits. I don't know. I haven't seen enough to convince me that these things work BETTER than normal balancing. It would also seem to me that if these things were better, balancing equipment using the old technology would have disappeared. and been replaced by this stuff. I don't know of a single vehicle manufacturer who uses this stuff, ergo, it must not be as advertized.

What about size? Is that a factor? Sort of. Again, I think this is more about the vehicle than the tire.

Tractors aren't highway vehicles. They operate on uneven surfaces, so balancing those wouldn't make sense to begin with. What about earthmovers? Those trucks don't get up to those higher speeds - and don't forget, about the road surfaces they operate on.

But what about over the road trucks? They DO operate on the same surfaces that cars do, and they DO operate at the same speeds cars do, so I think the analogy doesn't work.

So I am not convinced that the need to balance truck tires has disappeared - but I can easily be convinced that people would WANT to believe that happened as it would reduce costs. Things have gotten better, but I don't think we are there yet.
 
QUOTE: "But what about over the road trucks? They DO operate on the same surfaces that cars do, and they DO operate at the same speeds cars do, so I think the analogy doesn't work."


Do the math. A car/small truck tire vs a big rig. It's tire rpm per mile that counts. There are calculators available. Size - in this case circumference - matters.
 
Originally Posted By: user52165
QUOTE: "But what about over the road trucks? They DO operate on the same surfaces that cars do, and they DO operate at the same speeds cars do, so I think the analogy doesn't work."


Do the math. A car/small truck tire vs a big rig. It's tire rpm per mile that counts. There are calculators available. Size - in this case circumference - matters.
But I think that centrifugal (centripetal?) force is a radius squared thing, which would tend to offset the lower rpm ... ???
 
A great recent article on this very subject:

http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/owne...-balancing.aspx

The long and the short: Stop thinking of "balancing" as a process of correcting imbalance in a tire. The cause of an "imbalance" is likely something far and away from the tire. Large tire manufacturing processes are pretty accurate when it comes to creating an evenly balanced product.

I keep saying "imbalance" in quotes because one of the most common causes of "balance" issues is actually excessive radial runout, not an imbalance. Tires that aren't mounted to the wheel properly, with excessive radial runout is a common culprit. This is not the fault of the tire, it's the fault of the installer. A wheel assembly that's improperly mounted to the vehicle is another. Again, this is an installer problem. Stack these tolerances on top of one another and you'll soon enough get someone saying, "See! That's why I always balance tires."

This is even more and more true with passenger car tires. When everything is done right, balance isn't much of an issue. For all the noise people make about "road force" balancing, it's primarily a measure of radial runout and match mounting the tire to eliminate it. You can figure that out with a simple dial indicator. A Hunter road force balancer just makes it easy enough that the goon at the tire store can do it (even then, I may be overstating their abilities). Hunter will tell you about all the other things their machine can do and measure, but 90% of the corrections are radial runout.

On top of that, understand that in true imbalances situations, the entire rotating package needs to be addressed: brake drum, wheel, and tire.

In all reality, tire manufacturers saying that balancing isn't needed is generally correct. Assuming there are no damaged components, the drum is properly balanced, the tire is properly mounted so as to minimize runout, and the wheel is properly mounted and secured, you should have a pretty smooth rolling package. Of course, all it takes is a single hack or someone who doesn't understand all this and everything falls apart. Saying that balance isn't needed is the manufacturers way of pointing out that there is more to "imbalance" than the tires that are being installed.
 
Originally Posted By: user52165
......Do the math. A car/small truck tire vs a big rig. It's tire rpm per mile that counts. There are calculators available. Size - in this case circumference - matters.


But over the road truck tires and over the road truck wheels are harder to manufacture and are worse for balance and uniformity than passenger car tires and wheels. So those properties may offset the gain for the change in Revs Per Mile.

Besides, I really really think this has more to do with the characteristics of the suspension, specifically the resonant frequency. Passenger cars don't really vibrate until you get to that frequency (or at least wheel end vibrations don't cause issues until you get to that frequency).

Pu another way, If cars never exceeded 45 mph, you wouldn't need to balance either.
 
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It takes a lot more to shake a 22.5'' steel wheel with 41'' tire than it would at 15'' alloy wheel with 20 pound tire. They spin at a much lower speed, too. 41'' tire vs 25'' tire.

Growing up around trucks, I have never seen truck tires balanced, but I have seen some odd wear patterns on steer tires - usually the drivers side.
 
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