TIRE BALANCING HELP NEEDED

Tom N wrote:
Today I had 6 new Michelin 235/80R22.5 XRVs installed. No balancing required because my Michelin truck dealer installed them according to Michelin's instructions. They run smooth as silk.

See my previous post in this subject thread.

If you tires need "shaved" they are not mounted concentric on the rim.

-Tom

Tom,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to differ with you Sir. I've had MANY tires shaved over the years and ALL of them were mounted correctly. My first set I ever saw "shaved" was a set of 33x12.50x16.5" on my '79 F-350 truck. They had 30K miles on them, (and that was PHENOMENENAL for a Ford back then) and, still had plenty of tread left. But, balancing them made no difference on them what so ever. The truck still shook at multiple speeds.

Well, they offered to "true" the tires at a cost of about $7.00 each. I almost fell over when I saw what was being shaved off. There was a fairly large pile of rubber at each tire when he was done. But, as I watched this "new" process (to me) being done, I saw the high spots hit the blade numerous times as the tire rotated. It did that until there were no more high spots and the entire was against the blade, all the way around, like it was on a lathe.

I owned that truck since it's birth and it NEVER road as good as it did after they trued those tires. Since then, I've have had ones trued on our previous coach, a Fleetwood Bounder, 34V with the F-53 chassis and it too, road insanely smoother. And, as I watched from the beginning of the process, he removed quite a bit of weight and when done truing them, he only replaced about 1/4 the amount he removed for proper balance.

So, yes, there are many, many tires out there that need "truing". Not all tires from the factory are "ROUND". The frequency of out of round tires is for sure, limited, but, none the less, they are there. As for mounting "off center" on the wheel, yep, that happens too. On our present rig, the '04 Itasca, diesel, Les Schwab mounted six new XRVs for the previous owner, about 10 months prior to us acquiring the RV. We had an 800 mile drive home from where we purchased it and, I felt the tiny shimmy as we got on the freeway and that freeway was smooth as glass.

I told the DW, I "AINT" driving 800 miles with them shimmying. So,we immediately got off the freeway and looked up a Les Schwab tire dealer. We found one real close to our location and we took the rig in. The jumped on it and pulled both front tires and wheels off. The found that both front tires were a tad off center. They re-mounted the tires, put on about 1/2 the weight they removed and from that point on, it's been glass.

So, there's lots of circumstances that can provide an RV driver with poor ride in terms of tires. But, based on multiple points of experiences, I would never assume ALL tires are round, especially the large RV tires.
Scott