Is Road Force Tire Balancing Necessary?

[Stainer85]

I’m curious if road force balancing is required for our trucks. I’ve seen a lot of talk on here about folks getting road force balancing when putting new tires on their R1T. I have 21 inch wheels and when I last had a new set of the Perelli tires put on my truck, they only utilized spin balancing and everything seems to be fine. I am switching to the Michelin 21 inch defenders and was looking to have them installed by someone that does road force balancing, but it seems to be a tall task to find someone in my area, who does so. Everyone I’ve called just does spin balancing. Should I continue looking for someone who can road force balance the tires or is spin bouncing OK? Is there something particularly sensitive about our trucks that cause road force balancing to be an necessity?

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[Riviot]

I’m curious if road force balancing is required for our trucks. I’ve seen a lot of talk on here about folks getting road force balancing when putting new tires on their R1T. I have 21 inch wheels and when I last had a new set of the Perelli tires put on my truck, they only utilized spin balancing and everything seems to be fine. I am switching to the Michelin 21 inch defenders and was looking to have them installed by someone that does road force balancing, but it seems to be a tall task to find someone in my area, who does so. Everyone I’ve called just does spin balancing. Should I continue looking for someone who can road force balance the tires or is spin bouncing OK? Is there something particularly sensitive about our trucks that cause road force balancing to be an necessity?

It's not about the truck, it's about the tires. Some are more offensive than others: e.g. Falken Wildpeak AT3W. My Pirelli AS+3s are butter smooth on 2 different wheel sets with regular spin balance, but AT3W are ruff stuff.

 

[Glembi2]

It's not about the truck, it's about the tires. Some are more offensive than others: e.g. Falken Wildpeak AT3W. My Pirelli AS+3s are butter smooth on 2 different wheel sets with regular spin balance, but AT3W are ruff stuff.

My experience has been the same. Only needed road force balancing on two sets of tires over 30 years.

 

[DD4ST]

I experienced an issue with my stock Rivian 22 inch tires. Truck was delivered where the SC says they check balance, alignment, etc. In retrospect, I wonder if this check was spin balance (or maybe they did not do it?). Within 500 miles I am back at the SC complaining about feeling a balance problem. SC did a road force balance and found one of the tires could not be balanced within spec. SC said I had to go to tire manufacturer for warranty. I exercised the Pirelli warranty at Discount Tire with no problem due to low number of miles. Discount Tire also does road force balancing. Since then ride has been better. But your mileage might vary (pun intended).

 

[SwampNut]

BFG A/Ts have been the only tire I needed to road force. I hate that tire now. They have never done well for me at all.

 

[R1Tom]

I just had my 20's replaced with a new set of OEM tires and they were road force balanced....and no vibrations.

When my truck was first delivered it did have imbalance and the service center mostly corrected it, but this time it is perfect.

 

[epowermarine]

I had to go back for a Road Force balance one week after installing Michelin Defender LTX Platinum 285/60/20 because of a slight steering wheel shake above 70mph. I had zero shake with the original factory 21's. The new balance all but eliminated the slight wobble. All done at Discount Tire.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

TLDR Road Force balancing machines are worth their weight in gold and can save you from months or even years in my case of losing your mind.

Long winded version....
My previous experience with a set of BFG AT's on my Xterra. Bought them from Costco all seemed good, but then would get wheel shake at or above highway speeds. Took them back for balancing, they found them slightly out and sent me on my way.

A couple months later, the issue still persisted, so got them re balanced at a Kal-Tire, they found a similar issue, balancing was out, and they corrected it and sent me on my way. Issue persisted, so having had the wheels balanced I thought it was steering/wheel hub assembly related, so decided with the amount of off roading I do, that I should just proactively replace the hub assemblies and see what came of it. The issue persisted.

it wasn't until about 2 years of random part swaps and tire balancing being performed that I was at a Nissan dealership that had a Road Force machine and tossed them on. They found that 3 of the 4 tires had defective radials and it wasn't possible to balance them. They managed to get them closer to balanced than any other shop, but still had slight vibrations.

i currently have a new set of Nokian nAT's on my Rivian that have a balancing issue above 110kph, the Pirelli's never had the issue, so I know it's not the truck, it's the tires. Just waiting for a moment to take it in again.

 

[EV-by-the-Sea]

IMO, the cost difference between regular spin balancing and road force balancing is minimal. It's more irritating to me to spend the time to have to go back and rebalance if there's an issue, so I've just always had road force balancing done on all my cars' tires for probably the last 10 years. I plan in on doing the same when I replace the tires on the R1S.

 

[snowboarder777]

I've always had a set that needed to be road force balance on one of my 4 cars yearly no matter what brand but Michelins are the most roundest tires with the lowest numbers overall. It's night and day between spin balance and road force on my cars with low profile rims and tires which have very specific tolerance to give that smooth factory ride. All the cars from factory go through road force check before delivery. To me its something I always have checked with new tires to make sure nothing more than 10 to 12 lbs road force on cars or SUVs.

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