Tire Van

[Landjet]

I took my 993, which I've been having trouble getting the front tires to balance, to meet up with the Tire Van in Rockville, since they don't go as far as Frederick. I had considered returning to Radial Tire, but wanted to try Tire Van's high tech balancing machine. A real nice guy named Will met me and got to work on the wheels. They have the Hunter 9700 road force balancing machine. Will showed me how everything worked and I can say that machine is a technological marvel. It can tell everything about your tires and wheels. Will told me he had to go to classes for 2 weeks to learn how to use it. He also told me the machine costs $25,000 as compared to a regular balancing machine that costs $5,ooo. Will took his time, double checked things, and was real careful with my wheels.
Anyway, for $76 I got all 4 tires balanced and road force balanced. When I got on the freeway, all became clear. Those tires were so smooth, if I didn't know better, I would have thought that I bought 4 new tires. I highly recommend Tire Van, so much so that I'm thinking of taking my new car with a fresh set of Michelins, that Radial tire mounted and balanced for me, over to them. I think perhaps that machine can do an even better job. No disrespect meant to Radial Tire, as both these companies are great resources to us.

[BlackTalon]

Interestng -- I thought Radial uses a similar Road Force balancer...

[Jase007]

If your search for tirevan.net you'll see several dorki have used them successfully. Glad to see you had a good experience. Their Hunter machine has more computer screens, nice GUI, graphs, digital adjustments, etc... than any other I've seen.

To date .... 4 cars worth and some extra race tire / wheel shuffling. All while I wrenched away on other projects that are never done :lol:

I'll go back.

[Vicegrip]

I thought Radial uses an on the car balancer that spins the tire and the tech feels the run out. Perhaps they use both.

There was thread some time ago on this that might be worth digging up. IIRC the 9700 was determined by someone to be a standard knuckle draggers tool and no better than other common digital balancers. I use one of the 5 9700s at work to dial in tires and for me at least they work well. One brand new tire was calling for 3O+ grams on a wheel. I did a road force test and adjusted the mount per the machines instructions and after that and a bead seating cycle the balance called for 5 grams inside and 5 on the outside about 90 deg out.
I have a Coats model 700 digital balancer at the home shop. It is a basic digital dynamic balancer and it is calibrated using a 4 gram weight. There is a simple self test program that tis done by mounting and balancing a tire and rim and then put a 4 gram weight in a predetermined location. Re test to see that the machine sees the weight as 4 grams and where it should be. I have checked this and even moved a very small weight around to see if the machine would follow it. Sure enough it was able to adjust for a very small amount of added weight. It is able to "see" one gram. This is less than the little rocks that stick to a comp tire. I cleaned one after balancing to 0.0 and that alone showed up in the balance. Be sure I will truck any tire that calls for a lot of weight on the home unit to work as it is unable to measure run out.

Hunter has a new roadforce+ system that not only measures for balance and run out but measures pull as well. All tires have some pull induced by methods of and variations in construction. This to say a tire will want to track slightly off its rotating or spin center. The idea is to measure for this. Rather than compensating for induced pull in an otherwise well balance tire on an alined car by mucking up the alinement you get rid of bad tires or mount and match them so they counter each other. This system affords you a view of a tires rolling action that even the on car system does not.

I watched a tech at MB try and balance a tire that was calling for weight over 100 grams or the like. He dismounted the tire and there was a big dinner plate sized lumpy blob of congealed Fix-A-Flat that was moving around. Every time the tech spun the tire the number and locations would move. Some other shops tech had balanced the tire using 90 grams of weigh in one place. The blob moved and the driver started loosing fillings.

[87turbolook911]

For those who want a demo of the Tire Van, they'll be at the PCA Open House on Sept. 23rd.

They were present last year and it's quite impressive especially considering it's mobile.

[Landjet]

Well I guess I'll have to step back from my remark about taking my new car to have the tires re-balanced. I went out for a ride this afternoon and took the car up to 3/4 speed, if you know what I mean, and my new tires were smooth all the way up, so I don't need to take it to Tire Van. Thumbs up to Paul. That said, Tire Van's machine did balance tires that I had tried to get balanced by 2 dealers and 2 indy shops unsuccessfully.

[SigmaPi]

I just had Will from Tire Van by today and it is a great service. He brought me out to the van, told me to look around and explained the machine and the process. He also told me tire by tire how each was previously balanced and what they are balanced to now. It is refreshing to get such a transparent view of what is being done to your car and how they are repairing it. Will was very forthright in explaining what it was he was doing and why. I will use them from now on. Oh yeah the car rides great!

[Landjet]

I just couldn't help myself and took my new car to meet the TireVan in Gaithersburg. I still felt a slight vibration at high speed. This time Aaron did the work on my new set of Micheline PS2's that I bought at Radial Tire. The two front tires were both broken off the rims and turned to the sweet spot according to the computer and then rebalanced. Wow, that machine is incredible, and it did improve the ride. I am so impressed that the next time I need tires, I'm just going with TireVan. One note, make sure before hand to mention that you have very wide tires on the rear because for the road force machine to work on them, they must use a special spacer to center the tire on the machine. My tech didn't have one on the truck so could only balance the rears conventionally, which was not a problem in my case. Still he should have had one.