Balance rear tires on class A?

I run centramatics on my trucks. I also tell the tire shop that I will only accept tires that are 6 oz or less off after mounting. Really improves tire wear.

The front tires on my Genesis have beads in them...there is NO chance they will "turn to powder" under any circumstances.

Road force balance them and weights.
Beads turn to powder and powder is no no.
As to balancing them, yes.
Four to twenty ounces out of balance, does a lot bouncing. Two tires bouncing won't cancel each other out.
problems, I don't know but I like things to stay in the refrigerator and on the shelves, shocks etc not destroyed and muffler mounts and everything else not to wear out and stay put and a great ride.

jplante4 wrote:
They put Equal in the last set of tires I bought (truck shop). They're supposed to put special valve stems in that have a screen to prevent the Equal (basically sand) from clogging the valves. Next time I'll do beads. A couple of times over the winter I deflated a tire by checking the pressure and the vale got stuck.

The tire installers never put the filter on mine so every time I check the pressure I 1st shoot air into the tire to blow the Equal out of the valve stem, works every time.

We use beads in all six tires.

daverl3 wrote:
I am getting ready to replace the tires on my class A pusher.When quoting the price for installation, the dealer seemed surprised that I wanted the rear duals balanced. So now I'm wondering how much difference it will make. Any one with experience both ways?

Pay now or pay later! You can go cheap and skip the balance, but chances are you'll pay later with tires that prematurely cup and wear unevenly. I NEVER understood why someone would buy a $350-$700 tire and then not spend $10-$20 to have it balanced.

Yes, have them balanced or add Centramatics or balancing balls or powders, but do something!

Get them balanced.

When I bought my current coach (42' with tag, weighs nearly 40,000 pounds), the dealer put new tires on. He said he put balancing powder in all the wheels.

On our first long trip with the coach we had an annoying vibration. So, I had a tire shop removed the powder from the steer tires, spin balance and I also put Centramatics on the steer axle. It was much better but we could still feel some vibration/tire hop from somewhere.

We visited Les Schwab in Junction City, OR and had them remove one of the rear tires to see if there was powder in them. There was not so I had them spin balance all the drive axle and tag axle tires. The vibration went away after that. These were Michelin XZA2 Energy tires so not cheap.

I am a believer in balancing all the tires.

I've answered this question several times over the years with an example of what happened to us when the rear tires weren't balanced. We had about 50,000 miles on our 01 Adventurer and with an upcoming trip to Alaska I didn't want to take the chance we would have tire troubles. I went to the local Wingfoot (Goodyear Commercial Tire Dealer) and purchased 4 G670 tires. I asked at that time to have them balanced. They replied they would balance them with Equal Powder. Since I had the powder in the steer tires and it was working well I agreed.

When I picked up the motorhome there was no charge for balancing on the bill so I asked if it had been done. The service writer replied that the technician must have forgotten to add it to the bill so he did.

When the tires were new all seemed well. As they started to wear there seemed to be some vibration problems. Fast forward 2 years and almost 25,000 miles and the vibration became an issue. We stopped at a tire dealer in Florida and asked to have the powder removed and balanced with external weights.

I was called back to the service area to find the original dealer had never added the balance powder to the tires. Now 25,000 miles later the tires had flat spots.

It took over 12 oz. to balance the worst one and the others took between 8 and 10 oz. Even then there was a pronounced vibration from the flat spots. I ended up replacing the tires with less than 35,000 miles on them because they had not been balanced when they were new. Tires that should have lasted 60,000+ miles went only about half the distance they should have. At nearly $500.00 per tire that's $2,000.00 We wouldn't have had to spend had they been balanced as requested.

Front rear if they are out of balance you will get a shake. How much how little you can stand is your choice. I balance all tires on all rigs. On 22.5" I used beads and was well pleased, within a few feet they were rebalanced every time driven.

LEN