Road Force Balance - Good, Bad, Get done RIGHT?

[SumpChump]

Looking at my first set of tires to have Road Force balancing done with. Pirelli P7 Cinturato All Season Plus 215/55R17 on the factory 17x7 alloys on the 2013 Camry SE 25k miles on car and rims.

Any distinct advantages or disadvantages to road force balancing?

Any personal experiences?

Most importantly, any TIPS to watch for in getting it done right?

( BITOG wisdom is what I look for with this question , perhaps a bad brand of machine, a tip on how long I should see the guy AT the machine to do it right, a tip about WHAT I should see being done for each tire and rim at the machine as far as correct procedure)

Discount Tire would be the service provider.

 

[eljefino]

The best tip to get it done right is to go when they aren't busy and don't nag the tech.

Call ahead of time for an appt and ask for the guy who's trained, but then let them do their job.

 

[SumpChump]

You read my mind. I was going to go on a midweek daytime, perhaps before or after lunch timeframes. Ask the manager for his best tech since I'll be making a special day and 100 mile drive of it.

Any special care required after the balance as far as rotating or being required to road force balance for all future balances of that tire as positioned on that rim by road force techniques? Other tips advantages to road force?

 

[Kira]

Hello, Hunter's rep listed nearby shops with their road force balancing machines. Like you, I had heard of it and was curious.
I brought him my wheels 2 at a time and he charged me a bit less being clean and off the car.
The source of pressure is a swinging arm with a roller which isn't large at all. Very little time and no additional effort is involved
My wheels were balanced and in-use before I took 'em in.

Frankly, I felt no difference.

To be completely honest with you....I think the "anti-climax" knocked the entire experience out of my head.
You original post made me think of road force balancing for the first time since. Kira

 

[stephen9666]

I think sometimes shops don't use the RF feature to its full extent and just use it as a regular balancer. Or they just let the drum drop on the wheel, see the measurement and don't try to reduce it if it's not too high.

However, trying to compensate for the RF number won't be needed in most cases. Generally, a normal balance is fine. The RF feature is good for identifying vibration issues that aren't fixed with a normal balance.

To really use all the features of the RF machine there is extra time and effort needed because you need to break the bead of the tire and rotate it as well as take other measurements. But again, often it won't be necessary to do any of this.

 

[eagle23]

I just had this done yesterday on 2 of my rear tires. The two fronts were fine but one of the rears would always vibrate. I tried two places for balancing but went with a Discount Tire store near here, with whom I've had a lot of success. They're really meticulous vs. some other places.

These are OEM Michelin Primacy MXV4's on a 2013 Avalon Hybrid with about 9k miles. Just got the car 2 weeks ago.

One of the tires only had 3 lbs. road force, well within the 20 lb. fail point. The other had 19 lb. (!).

It was interesting to see that the "index points" were all of 2" apart. Moving them together reduced road force on that tire to 9 lbs.--half of what it had been. The machine predicted the improvement would only be down to 18 lb. but that was obviously not the case.

I agree--call ahead to see if the RF balance tech is on. In my case, it was the Assistant Mgr who was good. Hunter is the only brand I've been aware of, and as was said they can tell you on their website the places that have their RF machine.

I don't usually do RF unless there is a consistent vibration issue.

Keep us posted.

 

[linksep]

Don't waste your time or money unless you have a vibration issue that is not solved by conventional spin-balancing. Road force balancing measures the rim runout, and tire roundness (under load). The machine then directs the tire tech to rotate the tire on the rim in a particular orientation so that the resulting assembly will be as round as possible.

The rule of thumb when I was a tire tech at a beta-test shop for hunter was 10lbs of road-force for passenger cars. Under 10lbs on a passenger car and the owner will not feel any vibration caused by road force. If after force matching you cannot get the road force under 20lbs warranty the tire. The largest difference in pre/post force matching I ever saw was 57lbs road force (happened to be on my personal car with used [new to me] tires balanced to perfection). In that case my steering wheel vibrated through about an inch of travel at 60 MPH. I thought one of my coworkers pranked me by adding tons of weight to one of my front tires... Turns out I had perfect balance but 60lbs of road force on the right front. After force matching that tire it was down to 3lbs of road force and the car was smooth as glass at 60 MPH.

I made this video for another forum because a bunch of idiots over there kept recommending alignments to cure persistent vibration problems.

 

[LoneRanger]

Road force was my friend for a nagging vibration/shimmy in the steering wheel above 70mph my Forester with a new set of Nokian WRG2's. Installing shop did not have Hunter, tried spin balance twice, no joy and resorted to blaming my rims which happened to also be new but from tirerack.com not that shop. Yes tirerack ships rim/tire combos roadforced already, but they don't (didn't then) sell Nokian so no combo buy. Anyhow, disgruntled, I took it to a local shop with a Hunter road force machine. Nailed it on the first try and been good since.

 

[LotI]

RoadForce is definitely worth it, especially on a modern car that uses lightweight suspension components.

The limit for P tires is 15# of force. If it's under that they won't forcematch unless asked/told. Forcematch will put the "stiffest" part of the tire at the lowest spot on the rim. Worst case for the installer would be matching the tire with the greatest RoadForce with the rim with the greatest runout. It can be time consuming but worth it for ride comfort.

If you have a sensitive backside you may still feel 15# of force variation. You can request to get it under 10.

 

[SumpChump]

OP here,
Thanks SOOO much all!
Road force it will be!

 

[LotI]

you can go to RoadForce to find a local shop. Sounds like you already contacted your local rep for the same thing. You can also find shop with the StraighTrak feature to resolve pulls. The machine will tell the tech where to put the tires for least vibration or least pull.

 

[SubLGT]

Originally Posted By: eagle23
……….It was interesting to see that the "index points" were all of 2" apart. Moving them together reduced road force on that tire to 9 lbs.--half of what it had been. The machine predicted the improvement would only be down to 18 lb. but that was obviously not the case…………..


That is interesting. A lot of techs would have not bothered moving the tire on the wheel after seeing the machine indicate only a 1 lb improvement.

One tip, if you are getting a road force match mounting on your existing tires, the tech is supposed to drive the car for 10 miles to eliminate tire flat spots, and then get the car up on the lift immediately after the drive. If you are getting RF on a new set of tires at the time of purchase, then of course flat spotting will not be an issue. Flat spotting gives falsely high RF numbers.

 

[Traction]

From all the tires I have balanced, you can see a lot of run-out in the tire or wheel, with your naked eye. But I definitely see a lot more run-out in the tire. Not so much with a machined aluminum wheel, unless it is bent. If the wheel is pretty much perfectly round, it won't matter where you index the tire to the wheel. Sometimes you can eliminate a lot of excess wheel weights by indexing the tire 180, but sometimes that can make it worse, and then you can do it all over again. After balancing 1000's of tires, I have only had a dozen or so come backs. It's in all the details that can make the difference. I do wish I had a road force balancer though, but you could spend all day chasing it around. It would tell me more than I need, or want to know.

 

[linksep]

Originally Posted By: SumpChump
OP here,
Thanks SOOO much all!
Road force it will be!


So you have a persistent vibration problem that can't be solved by conventional balancing?

 

[CapriRacer]

Originally Posted By: SumpChump
Looking at my first set of tires to have Road Force balancing done with. Pirelli P7 Cinturato All Season Plus 215/55R17 on the factory 17x7 alloys on the 2013 Camry SE 25k miles on car and rims.

Any distinct advantages or disadvantages to road force balancing?

Any personal experiences?

Most importantly, any TIPS to watch for in getting it done right?

( BITOG wisdom is what I look for with this question , perhaps a bad brand of machine, a tip on how long I should see the guy AT the machine to do it right, a tip about WHAT I should see being done for each tire and rim at the machine as far as correct procedure)

Discount Tire would be the service provider.


Like linksep said: If you are just routinely having the tires balanced AND you don't have a vibration, then you are wasting your time and money.

What the Hunter GSP9700 RoadForce Balancer is best at is diagnosing vibrations. It will help sort out where to look to solve the problem.

You also asked what to look for when he does it. Well the real answer is you need to watch the screen and see if the machine calls for weight, and what the RoadForce number is - lower is better. But unless you know where to look and are standing right there (the RoadForce number is fairly small print), you won't be able to pick it up.