Balancing the wheels

[Steve and Brenda]

I had the OEM Mission tires replaced with some Freestars sent to me by Tireco. When I got the bill it was for mounting only, no balancing. I asked the technician at the Firestone dealership and he stated that trailer tires require no balancing.

I looked at the old tires and it appears that there were balancing weights on the wheels at one time. Tire experts - whats the verdict? Should I take the RV back to Firestone and get them balanced?

[TLightning]

We balance our truck and car tires, makes sense to balance the trailer tires.

[DHenry]

I just went through this on another post. I understand when you have your tires balanced to have them done by the lug centric method. You will have to ask for that method before having them done. I think a tire in balance will wear longer than one out of balance, but that is just my opinion.

[Glenn and Lorraine]

Every tire/wheel combination including the spare should be balanced. We always balanced every tire/wheel combination on every trailer that would be traveling at highway speeds. An out of balance on a trailer will wear the same and cause vibrations the same as on an auto or TV. You won't feel the vibration as you won't be in the trailer as you're going down the hiway but it will be there just the same. When I replaced my Mission's I had the new tires balanced. Take it back and tell them you want it done right and they shouldn't charge you for anything more than the balancing. The taking off and putting back on labor should be at their expense. You wouldn't have had to pay that labor had they done the job right the first time.

[sreigle]

What Doug said is very, very important. If they use the standard auto wheel/tire balancer without a lug centric adapter, those tires/wheels will "appear" to be terribly out of balance, perhaps so badly they cannot balance them.

Those balancers are the kind where they put the tire/wheel on the balancer and lock it down with something that screws down tight to the center hole on the wheel. You CANNOT correctly balance trailer wheels that way. They need an adapter that centers the wheel by putting lugs through the lug holes to center it. Do that and you get a good balance. Don't do that and you're probably ending up with tires further out of balance than when you started. And you won't know it until those tires wear badly, quickly.