tire truing- might be big help vibration- PW tires

[Doc Dave]

Check out this link:
http://www.tsissg.com/711-amermac-tire-truer


Click on the video. It shows a tire truing machine working on a Firestone. These machines are available for tires off the vehicle as well as on the vehicle. Out of round tires are not that unusual anymore, especially with the bigger ones on the trucks I believe. I called the company and there are many tire companies that have these; mostly truck and racing tire companies.

[Gordon Maney]

It's made in the USA!

Review of the specifications [if I am reading this correctly] reveals it handles diameters from 11 to 24.5 inches and widths of up to 18 inches. I believe the 11-24.5 is referencing wheel diameters. The typical Dodge wheel and tire assemblies should fit comfortably in there.

This process has been around for decades, just not often used, and most often used by someone who can simultaneously afford luxury cars and be very picky about ride and ride disturbances [tire industry term]. Historically, most folks didn't want to pay for new tires and then watch as a pile of what they just paid for ended up on the floor.

What we see is that a wheel and tire assembly on our old trucks can display quite a lot of behavior that is not perfect. Maybe it's good we can't go 100 mph? :-)

[mattsoldmopars]

Perspectives,,

I might not know much, but I have never felt the need to find one of these "truing machines". I mean last time I took one of my* power wagons for a spin 45-50 was about all "it" wanted to go anyways, and I felt fine at the speed and so did the tires.

My 2000 Ram 3500, has 6 new Firestone's on it and I had them balanced when put on new,, and they feel Fine at 75-80 with a trailer in tow.

NOW if I owned one of these cars,,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO0PgyPWE3o

I might feel the need to find a tire "truing machine" but I would hope that, that was included in the $25,000.00 for a SET of tires, (let alone the service which reportedly costs $70,000, (shipping included??) and the tires can only be removed from the rims in France) I sure would like to be able to "give it the beans down the straight" but I think I would have to sell every power wagon I owned and maybe the 10-12 I have already bought for my two young daughters, and maybe the grandchildren's also ;-)),,, might also have to take a mortgage out on the house if I had one of those cars.

* I am not sure if I can call it "mine" since at the time of the drive I did NOT actually have it titled in my name.

[Doc Dave]

I do not think this is only for luxury or racing tires, I think it is also used for flawed tires which for whatever reason the person cannot get a replacement for but are worth "fixing".

My brother had a Chevy LUV truck in the 70's with some Japanese tires. He had a bad vibration problem and they ended up diagnosing the problem as an out of round tire(s). They used the truer, and that solved the problem. I cannot remember if the dealer paid for it or my brother, but I do not think it was that expensive.

Just for information sake I called the company that makes the machine, and he gave me the names of many tire places in this general (metro) area that have one of these machines for use on customer's vehicles.

I do not know if I need it or not on my PW. The Power Kings are not balanced now, but I have not yet got it up to 55mph (I have an overdrive). I am still finishing up the restoration so have only driven at relatively slow speeds on the farm. When I spin one of tires and wheels when it is jacked up, I get a visual sense they might be slightly out of round.

[Gordon Maney]

I can easily believe what you say about getting observing what seems to be out of round or runout present. Certainly, the faster we go, the more evident the effects would be. It's fair to say that a great many early Power Wagons, if you could figure out a way to get them going 80 mph, you could not keep them on the road in their present form, and would find the experience to be at least somewhat death defying.

You would not want to go to the bother of removing the tires for this, but it would be interesting to first put wheels on a hub [on the truck] and turn them, checking for runout with an indicator. The really sophisticated method would be with a dial indicator, but any indicator would do. Meaning, a wooden pencil held on top of a concrete block or two. Turn the wheel slowly and observe how close you can get to a point, then watch how much the contact point moves as you turn. Do that for radial runout and axial runout.

Axial runout [movement parallel to the axis of rotation] displays as wobble. Radial runout [movement parallel to the radius of the wheel] displays like the gag bicycle with unequal length spokes arranged around the hub, causing the bicycle to go up and down.

I believe most would find considerably more runout on as assembled wheel and tire from their old Dodge than they would ever expect. My interest in mentioning the wheel is because, on a bad wheel, you would be truing the wheel's error from the tire. That is OK; you would need to keep the wheel/tire pairs as a set and indexed as to position, should you ever dismount one.

You could still get an idea of wheel condition by holding the pencil or other pointer by the edge of the rim, near where it touches the tire, observing for runout. [Given the condition of many split rings, it might be better to work off the perimeter of the wheel itself, rather than the perimeter of the ring, in the interests of enhanced accuracy.]

[Early, simple, commercially produced, front end alignment tools used a line scribed in the center of the tread with a simple, hand-positioned pointer. The toe bar then had features that would align with the scribed line. You do this with wood blocks and new pieces of stiff TIG wire. Drill the holes in the block on a drill press, so they are square. Forgive me, I digress.]

My meaning there is that a pointer can be quite an accurate tool.

One aspect of this that is interesting is that the tire industry would have you believe their accuracy standards have tightened up over the years. I do know there was a period when that very idea was being promoted as a marketing specification. Increased acceptance of this piece of equipment, when I thought they had all but died out, seems to suggest otherwise.

The balance issue you raise is yet another topic. I know I have had wheels off my 1948 Power Wagon that I took to be balanced. They were so far out of balance, and this with new tires, that they were literally unable to hang enough weight on them to bring the wheel back into balance. The other troubling difficulty with that was the weights would not stay on the wheel. I finally gave up.

[Charles Talbert]

We have used these in the past, and they work great for a MINOR flaw, however in more cases than not, it required more rubber be cut away to correct issues than one would desire to lose. This left the question, cut away approximately 25% of the tread (in most cases) in order to get round, or put up with the bounce from out of round tires. This undesireable alternative lead me to look for better quality tires. When we finally stumbled upon Yokohama radials and realized the Japanese could actually build a round tire, our issues were solved. Have not needed to resort to the truer since that time. It's a shame that in many situations, Americans seem to no longer have the desire to build a top quality product, this is just one more example.

[Gordon Maney]

We have used these in the past, and they work great for a MINOR flaw, however in more cases than not, it required more rubber be cut away to correct issues than one would desire to lose. This left the question, cut away approximately 25% of the tread (in most cases) in order to get round, or put up with the bounce from out of round tires. This undesireable alternative lead me to look for better quality tires. When we finally stumbled upon Yokohama radials and realized the Japanese could actually build a round tire, our issues were solved. Have not needed to resort to the truer since that time. It's a shame that in many situations, Americans seem to no longer have the desire to build a top quality product, this is just one more example.

Is there a particular model of theirs that is your favorite?

[Doc Dave]

The balance issue you raise is yet another topic. I know I have had wheels off my 1948 Power Wagon that I took to be balanced. They were so far out of balance, and this with new tires, that they were literally unable to hang enough weight on them to bring the wheel back into balance. The other troubling difficulty with that was the weights would not stay on the wheel. I finally gave up.

I am leaning to attempting to have them balanced and see what happens. If vibration is not a big problem will not worry about it.

[Charles Talbert]

I am leaning to attempting to have them balanced and see what happens. If vibration is not a big problem will not worry about it.

Most times the impossible to balance issue comes in when the heavy side of a tire gets mounted on the heavy side of the rim. When this happens, usually breaking the tire back down and turning to a different position on the rim will get things closer to balanced.

The bigger issue that I've spoken about many times is the out of round issue. If that's what you have going on, all the weight in the world hanging on it will not fix the issue. The only fix for that is to get out the truer, mentioned earlier in this thread, or buy a set of good quality tires that are ROUND.

[Charles Talbert]

Is there a particular model of theirs that is your favorite?

I'm assuming you are asking which model of truer we have used. We have never had one of our own, a tire dealer we used years ago had one and performed the service for us. He has since retired, I'm not sure if there is a truer in our area any more or not. Since we started installing Yokohama tires, we have not needed truer service.

[Gordon Maney]

I'm assuming you are asking which model of truer we have used. We have never had one of our own, a tire dealer we used years ago had one and performed the service for us. He has since retired, I'm not sure if there is a truer in our area any more or not. Since we started installing Yokohama tires, we have not needed truer service.

I meant which particular Yokohama.

[Gordon Maney]

Most times the impossible to balance issue comes in when the heavy side of a tire gets mounted on the heavy side of the rim. When this happens, usually breaking the tire back down and turning to a different position on the rim will get things closer to balanced.

The bigger issue that I've spoken about many times is the out of round issue. If that's what you have going on, all the weight in the world hanging on it will not fix the issue. The only fix for that is to get out the truer, mentioned earlier in this thread, or buy a set of good quality tires that are ROUND.

That is a great idea, and one — I hate to admit — probably would not have occurred to me.

[Charles Talbert]

I meant which particular Yokohama.

We've used 2 different ones, The Geolander M/T or the Geolander A/T. (MT is mud terrain, AT is all terrain). You can see the M/T on several trucks on our website, I think MaineSS has the A/T pictured in a tire thread from a while back here on the forum. The size is LT315-75R16. The reason I brag on these so much is simply because they eliminated a maze of tire issues for us. I've never had anything but good results with these.

[The Other Ross]

Quite a few years ago a friend of mine and I were riding to breakfast in his Ford
diesel Dually(pre powerstroke) and I noticed how smooth the truck ran and rode...real smooth.At this time the truck had apx 325,000 miles on it,yes I wrote 325K.The guy was a Professional Rodeo Cowboy so the truck spent nearly all its time pulling a loaded trailer...fast. He told me about the truing machine,every set of tires,all six, every time.Not only did the tires last he never replaced ANY steering or suspension component over the life of the truck.The machine he described trued the tires on the vehicle.Spun them on their individual hubs.

[Doc Dave]

That is very interesting, especially how it preserved the chassis and steering components from what I assume is a significant reduction in vibration, etc.

If you look at my original post on this thread, the link i listed takes you to the site where you can see them use both the off the vehicle truer machine as well as the on the vehicle machine. For the PW, it would make sense to me to leave the wheels and tires mounted on the hub and have it trued that way so as to really get the best effect of it.