To Balance Tires or Not

[wawrzynskivp]

Hello All,

Didn't want to hijack a similar thread on Ongoing Maint so I'll ask here:

Did you balance your tires, if so why, if not what happened?

I decided not to balance mine and see what the result was and I cannot see any bad effect.

(There is a poll at the top of this thread)

 

[gasman]

I have used goodyear flight special II for 40 years and never had to balance any.

 

[MED]

I use Michelin Aviator tubeless tires on Beringer wheels. Have always balanced with motorcycle weights. Easy enough to do, but I don’t know if there would have been an effect if I had not.

 

[rvbuilder2002]

A poll of this type wont reveal the entire story because until the level of balance of a wheel/tire assembly is checked, it is impossible to know whether it needs to be balanced or not.

So, those that might say I did nothing and it is fine, might have just gotten luck and have wheels that aren't out of balance very far.
Others will say I had to do so afterwards because I discovered they were so bad.

I have mounted a lot of aircraft tires. It is extremely rare to find one that needs no balance weight at all, though some are a small enough amount out of balance that it takes a bit of weight.
The majority of the time at least 1 oz is needed and much of the time it is 1.5 oz or more.

To me, with as much trouble as it is to remove a wheel ad balance it after the fact, why not just do it while doing the other work to mount the tire?
A lot of people are unaware, but an out of balance tire is one of the things that can excite gear leg shimmy. In my mind that makes it a no brainier to just do it while installing a tire.

 

[wawrzynskivp]

This is what I was interested in finding out.

I am sure there may have been a measurable misbalance in my tires. In fact with simple static balancers there will most likely still be measurable misbalance once the process is complete. So some misbalance is going to be acceptable. But how much misbalance is meaningful and how often is that level happening.

Strut shimmy would certainly be a symptom especially if it happened before the brakes were applied. What are other consequences of misbalance?

Sure, no poll is able to answer all questions. But it is at least interesting to me that most people who responded thus far did not balance and do not observe symptoms.

Really interested in hearing from those who did not balance and observed a symptom that was remedied by balancing and perhaps how much weight was needed to rectify symptoms.