Mixed feelings with this. Most shops sell you all kinds of services that you absolutely do not need and this shop is actually turning down money.

Anything that rotates should be balanced. Maybe a waste of money for some, but I guess I got that kind of money to waste. I think most professional tire shops and manufacturers would agree that all tire/wheel assemblies should be balanced. At least anything that is going over 40mph.

 

My thinking exactly. It can't hurt anything and it's not that expensive, so why wouldn't you balance your trailer tires?

 

What I've done for years is use ceramic balancing beads in my trucks and trailers without any problems in fact you never have to balance you tired again. Normally it cost just $10 a tire and they can be reused if you want because they don't wear out.

Denny

 

The 2024 Imagine XLS 23 MLE I bought in May came with balance beads.

The Rockwood trailer my daughter and SIL looked at a few weeks ago had balance beads. The salesman didn’t even know what they were or how they worked.

 

I use centramatic tire balancers on my RV (link below). They're pricey for sure, but anything I can do to keep my POS travel trailer from shaking itself to death and the cabinets from falling off the wall is worth it. Modern RV's are built to such low quality standards, the extra shaking caused by unbalanced tires just make things worse. I also use those same tire balancers on my tow rigs, yeah they cost, buts its a one-and-done type cost and you can even move them to different vehicles as to sell/ trade in/ upgrade,

https://centramatic.com/searchpagets...egory=trailers
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These are the ones I've heard of, until Denny @rvpuller mentioned the beads above. What would the functional difference be, if any?

 

The principle of operation is the same as the balance beads, but the centramatics hold a lot more weight (so they are capable of balancing tires that would other wise require more weight than the balance beads have), the balancing components (basically large steel beads) are self contained and lubricated in oil vice being inside the tire and not lubricated.

I run 37 inch tall, 13.5 inch wide mud tires on one of my old Dodge Cummins trucks and on a Jeep JK, no wheel weights on or in those tires at all, just a set of centramatics and those two vehicles drive smooth at the Texas highway speed limit (which is 80 mph) and perhaps a little beyond that speed,,,allegedly.

The only downside to centramatics is the price, if you can stomach that, then they're all win.
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They do the same thing but at a greater price plus I don't think they would clear my disk brake calipers.

Denny
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I suppose clearance of trailer disc brake calipers might be an issue, neither of of my trailers are disc brake. But the centramatics clear the calipers of the four wheel disc brakes on my 2005 Excursion, my 2010 F250 , my 2009 Jeep JK (that one even has a power stop big brake kit), as well as the DRW F350 I sold, the 97 Dodge only has disc brakes on the front, but they clear there too. I'm guessing brake clearance most likely isn't an issue.

I've ran balancing beads in motorcycle tires for years, they work just fine if you don't need much weight correction (like a normal high quality on-highway tire would need). Balancing beads have taken the interior paint off aluminum motorcycle wheels for me a few times ( they won't touch a powder coated wheel, but they will strip the inside of a painted one) and when busting tires off there is some rubber dust inside the tire that had to come from the beads wearing on the inside of the tires a bit, nothing to worry about for sure, just something that happens.

Where the centramitcs shine is in large heavy tires, be that on highway HD truck/ 18 wheeler tires, or off-road chunky tread mud tires.
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I will add one more piece of information. When you are dealing with trailer axles that are normally running at close to their max load rating you have to be careful of the wheel offset and adding a spacers between the hub and wheel, most trailer wheels are 0 offset and moving the wheel out changes that. The bearings size and location in the hub are designed for 0 offset to carry the load evenly so if you move the wheel out it changed the loading on the bearings again on a axle running at close to max weight rating.

Denny

 

You really think that the 0.0747 inch thick piece of 14 gauge that holds the outer ring (the part that goes between the between the wheel mounting surfaces) is gonna throw off wheel offset? If you think the Chinese bearing manufactures have engineering precise enough to account for that then I think you're giving them to much credit.

Sure putting on actual wheel spacers is a bad idea, but 0.0747 of an inch isn't a wheel spacer.
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I'm just curious - why spend the money on the special beads and such, instead of using anti-freeze mix in the tire itself?

 

That is a thing in certain tires, never heard of it in a high speed / road going application though.

Tractor tires are often filled (or partially filled) with an antifreeze (beet juice is actually really popular because if it leaks its doesn't poison your fields/ kill your crops) , but that's mostly for weight ballast in the back so when using the front end loader to pick up stuff, the rear tires don't come off the ground. I filled the rear tires of my little Kubota L3130 with several cases of that pink RV water system winterization antifreeze a few years ago for ballast reasons.

Hardcore rock-crawler buggies/ jeeps will also often fill their tires (especially their front tires) with a liquid of some kind to help the vehicle get a low center of gravity making them less likely to roll over.

Neither Tractors nor Rock Crawlers move at highway speeds though generally, but I'm guessing someone has at least tried to at some point along the way (Jeepers do all kinds of weird crap) and figured out it wasn't a good idea for some reason. But in principle, it should work.
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If you have TPMS in the trailer tires like I do, I would expect the anti-freeze to kill the sensors or at the very least make them work funny.

 

I don't know if they would affect the offset all that much but with our Nev-R-Lube bearings it's 0 offset only and that's what I'm staying with. I looked at changing my axles from 7K to 8K with standard bearings and they all said 0 offset.
As far as rubber dust from the beads I haven't seen any in the tires I've changed, 17" on my DRW, 17" on my F150 and 17.5 on our trailer. I've only run them on aluminum wheels so I don't know about wearing off any paint.

Denny