- Home Page
- More RVing Tips & Tricks
- RV Tire Balance and Truing
RV Tire Balance and Truing
by Motorhomes of Texas
(Nacogdoches Texas)
RV Tire Balance and Truing
This story was submitted on our RVing Tips and Tricks Page.
Have you ever had your tires balanced but were not totally satisfied with the outcome? It can become a frustrating experience at times if you have to return to the tire shop over and over trying to get a smooth ride, especially if it is a new set of RV tires that seem out of balance.
Many times, the cause is not that the tire(s) is out of balance but that it is out of round. When repeated attempts to balance fail, what the tire tech should be doing is checking run-out on the tire to see if it is oval-shaped and if it is, the lopsidedness can be corrected by rotating the tire 180 degrees on the wheel. Tires are seldom, if ever, perfectly round and the same is true for wheels. If the tire is mounted on the wheel in such a way that the "high" spots of both are aligned and the spots are high enough nothing will make the ride smooth. Rotating the two highs so that they are aligned 180 degrees from each other will many times minimize the problem.
There will always however be high spots and to get a really smooth ride what is needed is to "True" the tires. This involves either jacking the tire up while still mounted on the vehicle or placing the tire and wheel onto a machine that spins them while a "Shaving" device actually shaves off the high spots and makes the tire round.
A note of caution here: Many RVs nowadays have 22.5" wheels, and lots of those are cast aluminum. There are two different ways that these wheels are "piloted", either by the center hole or "Hub" or by the wheel studs. "Piloted" means the machining of the outside edge of the wheel where the tire mounts were machined true relative to either the hub or the studs. So, if the tire shop that trues your tire is removing the tire and wheel assembly to mount it into a machine for the shaving, they will need to know which way the wheel is piloted. They can usually do this with a visual inspection but it is critical in that if the hub piloted wheel is mounted and piloted by the studs in the truing machine, (or the other way around), the tires may not actually get trued and you will lose a little of your tire tread in the process.
I have had this happen in a shop near Atlanta. We had a
On a different topic...ever notice how some polished wheels
are lots shinier than others? It's because the owner shines them more often. Every time you shine those wheels, they get just a little shinier than they were. Acid washing the wheels prior to polishing will ensure that the grit on the wheels will not get ground into the surface of the aluminum. The new wheels, when finished, have tiny scratches in them that can't be seen by the naked eye. When they get polished each time the ridges of those scratches are knocked down just a little bit and over many polishing s they start to disappear leaving a progressively shinier surface each time. A good-looking set of shiny wheels can overcome many appearance ills. Shine em up! It's a good job for a high school-er!Favorite RVing Tip or Tricks with Us
Do you have any suggestions or comments on this topic? You can add them to this page by clicking on the "Click Here To Post Comments" link located near the bottom of this page.