On my 99 F350 dually I had new Michelin tires installed on the rear axle and had them balanced. After getting home I decided to check the air pressure and lug nut torque. I asked for 80PSI and found 65PSI, lug nuts barely had 70# torque and one tire had 2 two ounce weights next to each other on outside. Some years back I was told that if a tire took this much weight to rotate tire 180* on wheel and rebalance. Am I wrong here?

 

No, you're not wrong thinking that. Had to do that on some car tires back in the day. Old time tire shop would check the bare rim for heavy side then rotate tire on rim to try to get balance with smallest weights.

 

Damn straight
Michelins should not take much weight (4 ounces on a big truck tire is not much weight)(8 ounces would be a bunch of weight)
If it only needed 4 ounces I doubt I would automatically rotate the tire on the wheel myself
I would be inspecting the wheel as well if I thought it was too much weight
Find a different tire shop and have them do what you ask
Then go back there with the bill and show them
See what they do or say
There is a good chance the tire will want 5 ounces after you rotate it on the wheel
Are they by chance the spun aluminum Mag style wheels?
Those with a mitchys should take almost no weight

 

However
I buy 4 michies all the time and there is always one that takes what seems like a ton of weight
Pisses me off

 

No matter if the tire is re-clocked on the wheel 180°, or left exactly as is, the tire and wheel assembly will likely present as "imbalanced" when put back on the spin balance machine. All six tires will appear as imbalanced on the machine.

What a spin balancer is "balancing" is how the tire and wheel is chucked up to the machine, and dually tires and wheels, with a cantilevered hub face that is offset well outside of the wheel's barrel (drop center rim), are very difficult to obtain exact repeatability in how the assembly is chucked up to the machine. Oversize tires, such as your 265s, that increase the overall diameter, width, and weight of the dual wheel tire and wheel assembly, are that much more difficult to chuck up to the machine with repeatability.

Given the uneven air pressures and inadequate wheel nut torque you discovered with your installation, the workmanship of the tire technician is already questionable, which reduces the likelihood even further of any precision when it came to chucking the tire and wheel assembly up to the machine.

So no matter what, when you return the truck for the tires and wheels to be rebalanced, they will all likely appear "out of balance". You can have them all rebalanced to 0.00, and then and there, after they are completely through balancing each tire and wheel, but before mounting the stack of "balanced" tires and wheels to the truck, request that they balance the tires and wheels again. The ones that they just did. And they will likely be "out of balance". Same shop, same machine, same tech, same time of day, same tire and wheel, never mounted to the truck, just balanced, and now out of balance.

For the repeatable balance test, the tire and wheel must be removed from the machine entirely, and then remounted to the machine. Otherwise, the balance will repeat perfectly, because what is included in the balance is how that tire and wheel is chucked up to the machine. If the tire and wheel is retested without being unchucked, then of course the balance will repeat perfectly. But unchuck the tire and wheel from the balance machine, and rechuck it back again, and it will very likely be out of balance again.

At the end of 1990's I did a test of Ford dual tires and wheels, in 19.5" and 16" sizes, and found the foregoing to be true in every test. I contacted Hunter to find the tire shops who had the top of the line Road Force balancing machines, and paid the shops to "balance" my samples of new dual tire and wheel assemblies. I then waited until they removed the tire and wheel assembly from the machine, and offered to pay them again to rebalance what they had just balanced, and sweetened the deal with a bet (that I did not enforce) that the balancing effort that they just did would not be balanced. The tire techs invariably scoffed at this insinuation, and offered to rebalance a tire and wheel for free, just to prove to me that their work was good. They never got to another tire and wheel after that, as they would be so flummoxed at why the tire and wheel that they themselves just got through balancing, and that had never left their shop floor, was now all of a sudden "out of balance."

Since 2000, Ford has released several technical service bulletins applicable to DRW tire assemblies for F-53 motorhomes and F-59 stripped chassis, advising dealerships with tire balancing equipment to use specific wheel centering kits to mount hub centric DRW wheels on tire balancing machines, in order to achieve improved repeatability in how the tire and wheel assembly is chucked up to the machine.

Personally, and as informed by past experience, I don't pay too much attention to what tire shops do or don't do to balance tires on DRW wheels. Instead, I use dynamic wheel balancers, which continually balance the entire rotating assembly, including hub and rotor, and all the rocks that get stuck inbetween the tire tread blocks, as they come and go. And these dynamic balancers also balance the specific way that the wheels were mounted to the hubs on the truck, not on a tire machine.

To avoid material clumping from moisture inside the tire, and to avoid any pelting of the interior liner of the tire, I use dynamic wheel balancers that have the balancing media in a separate toroidally shaped tube that is attached to a thin flat disc that mounts between the wheel and the hub. The balancing media is suspended in an oil type fluid within the tube, and is centrifugally distributed as a self-centering counter ballast when under way (over 20 mph) to counter balance any imbalances inherent in the rotating assembly. After purchasing and testing each of the two available brands of independently mountable dynamic wheel balancers, that type that I have found works best are called Centramatic.

 

I recall the Hunter balancer I used back in the 90's had a hub adapter with studs. We never used it, but we also did not do many duals. The adapter was for odd rims that had either too small a hole, like some old foreign cars, or too big a hole to where the cone would run out of threads. I think they still sell them, Flange kit and stub kit or something like that.

Those concentric balancers, I wonder if they would work on the F150. The 2015 and up are very sensitive to road force, anything over 10 can be felt either in the seat, the floor or the gas pedal. I have two different sets of wheels/tires and one set will vibrate between 45 and 53 and the other between 50 and 58. Both sets were road forced, with one tire near 28 on one set and 17 on the other.

 

After putting up with a slight out of balance shake on my 2000 DRW and then my 2013 DRW after I replaced the OEM tires I install 5oz of balancing beads in each tire and removed all the weights and the problem has been solved for the last 47K miles. I'm also running beads in all my 17.5" load range H tires on our trailer and have noticed better tire wear. I also had them in our now sold 2003 F150 with the same results, smooth ride and no out of balance shaking.

Not sure about a 1999 DRW but our 2000 and 2013 DRW called for 65PSI and that's what I've been running loaded and unloaded.

Denny

 

I used to have to spin balance some of them on the car. Got ignorant as I had people coming from 3 states away to have me do it
When spin balancing on a DSP we had to but special adapters for those 22 inch wheels on the F450 and 550's and they work on the 350 duallys

 

It seems to me that similar tires should take close to similar weight. Tires today are way better than they use to be. I'm thinking you have a separated tire that's going to come apart on you. My cousin has a tire shop I'll ask him

 

As far as pressure unless it's an OEM tire you add the pressure rated on the tire

 

​​​​​​Do you really believe that the pressure rating is for all tires not just OEM. The pressures rating is based on the trucks weight rating not the tire max rating.

Denny

 

All that tells you is what pressure the tire needs to be at for maximum capacity. . That is not the same as what the actual psi should be.

 

For yall that think all tires are manufactured exactly the same and all use the same pressure shows how little you know about tires. Then there's those that say "it says maximum" pressure so what's the minimum 0? You use what the tire manufacturer writes on the tire. The Ford Bronco/ Firestone suit was over 2psi lower than Firestone recommended and that's what caused rollovers. No matter how smart you think you are Firestone know more about tires than all of us here together

 

For those that say "It says maximum pressure" I just looked mine DO NOT say that. I have 2 maximum LOAD ratings and only 1 PSI rating 80PSI and a warning not to over or under inflate may cause serious injury or death

 

We aren't talking about Broncos or any other SRW vehicles this thread is about F350 DRW trucks and if you run them at 80psi especially on the rear you will wear the centers of the tires out from over inflation and the ride will be tearable both loaded or empty. I've found after 22 years running Ford DRW trucks that 65 gives the best tire wear. We pull a 16K 5th wheel with 3400lbs of pin weight and have the boxes loaded with tools and a 50 gal aux tank so we have plenty of weight on the truck.
I've run F350 CC long box SRW trucks with utility boxes that were loaded 24/7 365 to max GVW and I ran the tires at 80 psi because of load but a DRW is a different animal.

Denny