Balance Tires or Not

Know how your car bounces and vibrates when a tire is out of balance? Think your trailer is any different?

Anything that spins can benefit from balancing…

Every TT I have owned I have balanced. On my first TT the tires shook so much it shook the grease covers off. I found the problem after changing some twice. A friend said to have them checked. They were bad and it fixed the problem. This, I am sure saved my tires.

If you balance make sure it is lug centric rather than hub centric.
That hole in the middle of the trailer wheel is not always centered.
Aluminum with a machined hole might be fine, stamped steel probably not.

Yes on high pressure snap in stems or metal stems. I recommend high pressure snap in.

http://www.countrytrailer.com lug torque

If it cost extra then i dont, i am lucky i have a tire balancer at work. But i do balance one way or another.

My vote is for balancing. It only can help with the ride and tire longevity and certainly can't hurt. The factory tires on my trailer weren't balanced and I didn't notice any ill effects, however, when I upgraded to my set of Maxxis tires, I had America's (aka Discount) Tire balance them. They only charged a couple bucks a corner, which includes lifetime balancing, so each time I have them rotated, they will check and rebalance as necessary. For the price of a new set of tires, I figured 8 extra bucks is nothing...

A lot of times torque specs will be printed on a sticker right above the wheels or perhaps the ID sticker somewhere on the front of the trailer.

TucsonJim wrote:
Hey fellow Tucsonan. Balancing is a matter of preference. I've had tires I balanced, and tires I didn't. I never noticed much of a difference. You'll be sure to get a lot of responses on here that say your RV will fall apart if you don't balance them, but don't be so sure. I know I've paid to have them balanced in the past, only to have the weights fall off in just a few miles due to side loading on the FW's tires.

You should be able to find the torque specs in the documentation of your RV. I have stickers right over my wheels which tell me what the torque is. You can probably find it in the axle documentation or owner's manual in your owner's packet.

Good points.

Having owned three 5th wheel trailers and one TT and several equipment trailers and boat trailers with axles from 1750 lbs to 10000 lbs I've never had any of those tires balanced. My current '97 5er for example has 35k miles on the LT tires and the previous set of LT had 55k miles. No issues with the tires or suspension or ....... from not balancing them.

To the OP;
Torque specs depend on the lug size on your trailers hubs.

Only my opinion, but getting the balance done at least removes a variable. There may be imbalance someplace but you will know its not tires. And by the way, a tire in good balance from the factory is about 1 in 1000.

On all my vehicles I rotate my tires myself and in the process remove any foreign material from the tread (pebbles, etc) and clean the back sides of the wheels so the dirt doesn't introduce imbalance. It also makes me feel good that they are clean. YMMV.

dbbls wrote:
If it turns it need to be balanced.

Absolutely.
You balance because it keep the tire from bouncing and wearing out not only itself but all the other components in the suspension system.