Road Force Balance and Tire Rotation

No. They remove the wheel off the car and balance the wheel on it's own. It doesn't matter where it's put back on. Wherever you put it, it doesn't change the fact that the wheel is still balanced.

Zephyr22b wrote: ↑No. They remove the wheel off the car and balance the wheel on it's own. It doesn't matter where it's put back on. Wherever you put it, it doesn't change the fact that the wheel is still balanced.

That's what I thought. But the guy at simplytire told me otherwise. The wheels that I wanted to be in the front, they installed it in the back. So I came back and ask to put it in front. The guy said that road force chooses which wheel is best to be put in front that's why they put the wheel in front. And if they install it in the rear the balance will be useless and the money I paid for balancing is wasted.

Well, I was probably wrong and what they said is probably all true as a means to show how accurate the machine is, but is the difference really that significant to say the balance would be "useless"?

http://www.hunter.com/wheel-balancers/road-force-touch

Road force balancing is just a different way of balancing the wheel, it doesn't matter where it gets installed on the car after the balancing...

I really have no idea. But I'm pretty sure we all do tire rotation right? So to think that rotating my tires would mess up road force wheel balance I'm kinda not sure about it. I tried to search about this but couldn't find anything. But if what the guy said is true, it means I have to do another wheel balancing if I decide to rotate my tires.

Let technology pick what's best for us.

Not all wheels/tires are perfectly balanced or round., even after roadforce

Roadforce lets you know which pair of the tires are the worst so you know to put those on the rear
. The best pair goes on the front

99% of the time, it doesn't matter for rotation. After a while in use, normal tire wear throws thing off anyway

l69norm wrote: ↑Not all wheels/tires are perfectly balanced or round., even after roadforce

Roadforce lets you know which pair of the tires are the worst so you know to put those on the rear
. The best pair goes on the front

99% of the time, it doesn't matter for rotation. After a while in use, normal tire wear throws thing off anyway

Ok that makes sense. But just by visual inspection though the tires in front are the bald ones. And the rear wheels have the better tires. I guess that doesn't matter I will change it to winter tires anyway.

The machine is not only capable of road force but force match. Force matching tells you the exact location on the vehicle to put the tire.

Road Force balancing puts a load on the tire. 1200 lbs, from what I'm reading. Unless your front and rear tires were done with different loads because you have very uneven front/rear weight distribution, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to rotate the tires.

Ok so straighten this out, I can put my rear tires to the front and front to the back. That won't make my wheel balance useless. That's what I wanted to make sure. Thanks guys!

99% of time, you can rotate fine. If you notice a new problem, just rotate back


Some performance cars are very sensitive to imbalances, especially with non stock wider/bigger/heavier aftermarket rim/tire combos. Most of these types of cars use different tire sizes front/back so you can't rotate anyway

Yeah, I can't see where this method of balancing makes any difference front or rear. The guy at simplytire may have been thinking of on-car wheel balancing, where the hub and brake rotor or drum also enter into it, as well as which of several positions the wheel is mounted on the studs. Even that doesn't really matter unless the other parts are out of balance in the first place.

yuan23 wrote: ↑Ok that makes sense. But just by visual inspection though the tires in front are the bald ones. And the rear wheels have the better tires. I guess that doesn't matter I will change it to winter tires anyway.

Why would you bother to balance almost bald tires?

Either way, I'd keep the bald tires on the front, with the weight of the engine it will help with traction.

BeaverLiquor wrote: ↑Why would you bother to balance almost bald tires?

Either way, I'd keep the bald tires on the front, with the weight of the engine it will help with traction.

Long story, I bought a used set of wheels but one tire is ripped and I needed the car for my wife's road test so I just bought what they have which is the 2 bald tires. Not that bald, still good for maybe couple of months. Free balancing. I didn't buy new set of tires because the wheels I bought are for the winter set. So the bald tires will be replaced in a few weeks anyway.

I'd post the question on the SimplyTire review thread. Allen seems pretty good at responding.