I have now had two tire dealers install tires for me (Goodyear and Michelin, both in Calgary) and I must say that I am very frustrated with what they did or didn't do in the installation, without my approval or instructions. I'm writing this so you can interrogate and instruct your tire dealer so that they are doing what you want them to do.
My first problem was with the Goodyear front tire installation, as mentioned above. I now have a much better understanding of the problem that forced me to replace the tires that they had installed at 25,000 miles. The tires were rivering and scalloping. The real problem was the scallop that flat-spotted the tire heavily within 1000 miles of me removing the coach from storage. I swapped the left side tires front to rear so that the heavy vibration would be absorbed by the rear axle, while limping home. I do recall noticing that the front tire had no balance weights, but thought it couldn't be a real problem since I had done 25,000 miles with the tire before the flat spot suddenly appeared. When I switched to Michelins on front, I asked the dealer to give me the Goodyear tire from the other side as a spare. I noticed that the tire was full of tiny balancing beads.
The Goodyear dealer had balanced the front wheels with beads rather than bothering to spin it and use proper weights. And, he never notified me of this. In retrospect, I can see that the beads worked OK for a while, but while the coach was in storage, the beads in the left front tire must have become stuck in place. Worse, they got stuck in the wrong place and put the tire out of balance so that it quickly flat-spotted. At first the flat spot was only in one place, but over the next 1000 miles, it developed a set of flat spots beside it, just like a washboard road expands a pothole to become a series of bumps.
I've read a bit more about balancing beads and most of it is bad. People use them in wheels to avoid the "ugly" look of wheel weights, I suspect, since they often go on dressy wheels like our aluminum wheels and motorcycle wheels. But, there is no guarantee that the beads will dynamically move into the right space every time you start to roll. Oscarvan talks about another system by Centramatics that uses a ball that floats in a circumferential tube. He mentions it in his Dragonship Blog at
https://dragonship.blog/maintenance/vibbbbrations/ . I can imagine that this is better than balancing beads, to the extent that the ball is in oil and can't get stuck in a bad position on the inside of the tire.
Moral of the story: decide how you want your tires balanced before hand and make sure the dealer does it your way. I'm all for proper balancing weights. They can go on the inside of aluminum wheels, where they aren't an eyesore.
My second set of problems is with the installation of Michelin tires on my coach, which I discuss in my previous post.
When questioned, the dealer insists that they put the front wheels on a balancing machine and used weights. But, I can't find any weights on the tires, even though they run smoothly. So, either I've missed the weights that he installed (they could be the stick-on kind rather than clip-on kind), or the Michelin XZE tires were so well built that they didn't need balancing, or he used balancing beads. Before the installation, I had taken pains to explain that I didn't like balancing beads.
Well, if the front wheels develop any kind of vibration, I'll be quick to go to a competent tire dealer for inspection (inside for the beads) and rebalancing.
I used the same dealer, but a different shop, for my rear Michelin X Multi D tires. This time, he added a fluid called Pro Long to the inside of the tires, without consulting me in advance, although he was happy to charge me for it. This stuff is Propylene Glycol, perhaps mixed with water. That's engine anti-freeze, so I did some online research to discover that this is a very popular addition to tractor tires, where it gives extra weight for traction. They added 20 oz per tire in my case, but tractor tires get many pounds of the stuff. As antifreeze, it should be safe on my aluminum wheels and rubber tires, since an engine coolant system is used along with metal and rubber. I did see one reference where it might be used in truck tires. It might work a bit like balancing beads, running around the inside of the tire to balance it. I'm really annoyed that he installed it without my prior approval.
Staying with the rear tires, I questioned the dealer whether he balanced the wheels, and to my surprise, he said that they never balance rear wheels. That shocked me, since I had been talking about the issues of balance with him. However, it seems like the installation technician actually did spin the tires and use balancing weights, because I see weights on all 4 wheels. And the tires do seem to run smoothly on the road, so things seem OK. But, if he was balancing while the Pro Long propylene glycol was sloshing around inside the tire, things might have gone out of kilter. So, I'll have to watch those wheels, as well.
Reflecting on this claim that rear wheels needn't be balanced, I do note that Freightliner did balance the rear Goodyears that were delivered with my coach.
One final observation occurred when I asked the salesman about what pressure they had put in the rear tires. I assumed it would be the pressure of the wheels they took off. But, they set the pressure way lower. When I queried this he insisted that you should always run Michelins with lower pressure. He never asked me about the four corner weights of the coach. That tells me he doesn't trust Michelin's published inflation guidelines. If I blew a tire and wound up trying to sue somebody for damage, I'm sure the court would insist on Michelin's published guidelines rather than the installers' claims.
Anyway, it is just so frustrating to have these needless problems induced by the tire dealers.
–Gordon
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