Forum Discussion

gbsb's avatar
gbsb
Explorer
Oct 05, 2013

Tires and Wheels

Posted about 19.5 tires a while back. Hercules tires was recommended because of price and experience with them. Ordered them from Amazon.com free shipping, nice looking tires. Had them installed and they took a lot of weights to balance, road rough and bounced a lot. Went back to installer and he rebalanced tires much better , Now he says my rims are bent and wobble and the tires are out of round. Since I didn't buy tires from them they don't care. I think they bent the rims installing on truck, there is a small lip the rim has to slip over to be flat on the axle. So just be careful who you get to mount tires if you get them from the internet. I did save a lot of money but may have to replace rims and put up with a rough ride until the tires wear out.
  • I ordered my Dynatrac tires mounted on Vision rims. they came palleted and shrink wrapped already mounted on the rims and balanced. I just had to unpack and mount them on the truck. I now have 15k miles on them without issue.
  • I ordered new 19.5" steel rims and tires from Ricksons. I opted to have them mounted and balanced, to replace my OEM Aluminum 19.5" Tires and Rims. I mounted them onto my truck in June and they ran perfectly from the moment I put the truck in gear. No alignment or balancing needed. They matched my Ford Truck without any adapters. I sold the old OEM Tires and Rims to the 2nd person who came to look at them. Happy, Happy with the change and additional safety of having more capacity tires and rims. I always cringe when some put priorities on saving a few $$$ on something like tires and rims.

    b
  • I have 22.5" on my truck and tried to use just weights to balance them and I hated my ride. It was almost unsafe to drive at highway speeds. So I got centramatics wheel balancers (I think they're called) You can buy them for anything but truckers use them a lot. They are a ring that mounts behind tire and continually balances your tire and anything rotating attached to it. So on a rear end it is balancing even the axles. but they work great and it's a one time investment. You can buy the beads that go into the tires and they work good to but usually you replace them after a tire change. I also have been told they stick to the rubber in the tires sometimes now because of condensation or other reasons, and no green slim or fix a flat with these.
  • Just a thought from my own experience working with tires. Most tires will have a dot on the sidewall which will indicate the heavy spot on the tires and should be indexed with the valve stem if not then it can give you trouble while balncing the tires also if the shop that mounted your tires did not pay attention while balncing the tires then they could not see that the tire was out of round as for your wheels you should check the mounting surface with a straightedge prior to mounting them on the truck after that any damage done when installing falls on the installer. Good luck
  • I would not be to quick to blame the installer. While bending all four wheels is possible, I don't think it is likely. If the metal that locates the wheel is bent, yet the wheel is flat to the axle, other than looks it should be okay. As for balance, the 19.5s are heavy and heavy tires can be tough to balance. In my experience, I have had to re-balance most my tires after a few hundred miles.

    It is pretty easy for you to tell if the rims are bent, or the tires are out of round. One way is to simply take the truck to a different shop.

    I buy quite a lot from the internet, but not tires. Too much to consider for potential problems on big objects that cost a lot of money. I have also found with a little research and price comparisons I have never found a big savings on tires from the internet. With the tires in your driveway, you still have to have them mounted and balanced, pay disposal fee on your old tires, and probably limited on where you can take them for any warranty issues. If there is a problem like you have now, how and with who do you deal with it?

    Wayne
  • Did you check the country of origan on the sidewall...some of Hercules are made in China and have had issues.