Smooth Out Your Ride With Road Force Balancing

A comfortable ride starts with the wheels, no matter if the car is a compact two door, or a huge truck with a 12″ lift kit installed. A lot of different aspects go into making sure the wheels of a vehicle are rolling smoothly and comfortably. One of the major components of this is wheel balancing. Balancing, adds weights, either clip-on or stick-on, to points on the rim designated by calculations of a wheel balancing machine.

A major problem for many lifted truck drivers who have big rims and even bigger tires is a vibration when driving on the highway. This vibration can be so minor it is barely detectable, or it can be very violent and scary, shaking the entire vehicle. This violent shake is commonly referred to as “The Death Wobble,” especially by Jeep owners with a rig set up for serious off-road driving.

Traditional balancing can fix these vibrations, but from time to time the machines used for this type of balancing just don’t rectify the problem. There is a solution however, the Hunter Road Force Balancer. This balancing machine conducts many complicated calculations to determine the proper corrective procedure to get rid of that nasty shake.

Like the traditional balancer, the Hunter Road Force Balancer spins a wheel, (a tire mounted on a rim and set to proper inflation), and tells the technician how much weight needs to be added and where it needs to go. It is, however, superior to the traditional balancing method because of an extra step involved. When performing a Road Force Balance, the wheel assembly is spun as normal, however, there is a roller that comes and puts up to 1400 pounds of force onto the tire, effectively re-creating the effect of the tire rolling down the road. Any vibrations or oddities are then calculated and then solutions are presented to the technician. This type of balance can detect bent rims, tires which are out of round, and the high point of the tire and the low point of the rim. Once the high and low points are identified, the machine may instruct the technician to rotate the tire so the high point of the tire lines up with the low point on the rim, effectively reducing the amount of weight needed. It can also determine side to side runout as well as lateral run out in order to identify any issues with the tire or rim. After the Road Force Balance is finished, the wheel is then balanced in the traditional way.

Road Force Balancing is definitely something all Lifted Truck owners should consider doing to their wheels. Most lifted trucks have oversized tires and aftermarket rims, and traditional balancers just can’t get them perfectly balanced, while Road Force Balancing will.