Technical Balance Beads......Again

find someone close by with a bubble balancer, sometimes its easier to see what you need ultimately by watching the simple form of bubbles.

 

Many years ago when every $ counted a lot for me, I purchased some new tires that were advertised as "blems". Thinking that it meant a "cosmetic defect", I was ok with that.
Boy was I wrong. A belt inside the tire was loose and moved about, affecting its balance. Since you had the tires balanced, and then when you mounted them, an imbalance showed up.......well I was just wondering if you might have a similar problem. Believe they were bias-ply tires, but it was in the 70s.

 

They had a lot of those kind of problems with the glass belted tires back in the late 60s early 70s!

 

I experienced the same vibration as the OP at speed, I removed the cokers and replaced them with DB Auburns and I have ran to 125 without vibration. The Coker molds are old and overused, some of them are just not round. Tire beads and witchcraft cant make a square tire out. A tire shaver might.

 

We added 2 ounces today and it was better but not smooth. Tomorrow, we add 2 more. I am encouraged that will work. Thanks!

 

Hey, rockable;
vtw has the right answer. If they won't balance out easily, swapping doesn't help nor does rotating tire on rim, gotta check the roundness. & have them cut - if you really want to keep them. Damn near impossible to balance out-of-round. They still won't be in-balance after shaving, but they'll be a hell of a lot easier to balance.
Marcus...

 

They are not out of round. Max run out, as stated above, was 3/32. That is acceptable, I'm told.

 

That seems like way too much out of round to me. Unless you mean side to side rather than diametrically. That would still be out of spec to me but not as bad as the out of round. I'd try road force balance followed by tire truing if you can't get them replaced.

 

OK. Good luck, please let us know what works.
TIA.
Marcus...

 

Well, all the balance beads in the world aren't going to make these tires work. Next attempt is road force balancing.

I did put a set of known good riding wheels/tires on the car today and the ride was smooth as silk. So, there is no problem with the car. It's the tires.

If road force balancing doesn't perform a miracle, they are going back to Coker. This is the 2nd set. I'm not cutting brand new tires and hoping they are going to ride well. I have 2 other cars with Cokers on them. None of them are absolutely smooth but both are acceptable. These have been awful and they have created a lot of work for both me and my tire dealer.

 

I was hoping you would bolt another set on and test it. Mine was a night and day difference switching to DB Auburns, And they look better in my opinion.

 

So, you liked the Auburns. Are they quiet and smooth? They actually make these, it appears.

 

I think this person nailed it. Really is a process of elimination.
As far as a tire shaver .... We are talking about a retread shop that retreads Truck Tires.
I would suggest a Bandag retread shop because they are simply the best trained & have the best equipment available.
They can mount the tire on the buffer, and sneak up on it as it is out of round and slowly grind the rubber away until the tire is round.
This is a common practice for truck tires when doing repairs on them.

The issue with car tires and bias ply seem to be more susceptible. Simply because of quality control.
When the tire is built, there is layers & layers of rubber, bias ply, rubber, bias ply ... Is this a 4 ply tire? You get the point. Then there is a extra amount of raw rubber applied to the tire to make up for the tread area .... Is it a snow tire? .... just saying once the casing is built, then more rubber is added for the tread.

Now when they put the tire in the mold, it has to be perfectly centered.
The mold is pre-heated to 230 degrees, the employee is using a crane and is dressed in protective clothing to insert the tire into the mold. Is a hot environment. If that tire is off by say 1/8" from being centered ... When they lower the top side of the mold and cure the raw rubber into a tire ... If the tire was not centered there will be some rubber being pushed to one side of the tire.

Sometimes you can balance this out ... sometimes it is simply too much rubber and the tire is out of round.

We have to ask ourselves if this is just poor quality control & the employee was drunk & did not care ... Or is it the molds being used are so old it is impossible to properly center a tire .... A new mold will cost $35K & we sell $10k of tires per year so we are not going to replace the molds?

Not blaming anyone here, just throwing a light on the issue.
Either way the tire is fine usually. Just need to toss it onto a buffer and it will make the tire perfectly round and it will run out it's normal life.

My whole point is, I have operated the buffer doing this job. You can listen and hear the whack ... whack ... whack as the tire rotates around the grinding blades, as you move in you can hear where you have full blade contact all the way around and you back out and shut it down.
The tire is now perfectly round, the tread looks like crap but you drive it a few hundred miles and will look just like the rest. ..... You will now be happy with your tires.

Make your own choice, at least you know what you are fighting.

 

So much so that I bought 4 more of them for my PU under construction (WW on that one). Opposed to the Cokers, the Auburns are from brand new molds. Call DB and ask for Bill.

 

Not related to Rockable's problem, but I have removed tires on some of the cars in the collection I work for and the brake drum will spin until the heavy spot is down. It has happened on many 50's cars. The brake drums are so out of balance that if the bearings are loose enough you can spin the drum and it will always end up with the same spot down.

 

I have had severe balance problems with brake drums before. I chased my tail for a long time on my 54 Chevrolet before figuring that one out.

 

After road force balancing, the worst one was going to require 12.75 ounces of weights! So, we made an executive decision to send them back and go to plan DB. I am ordering the DBIII tires which are built on the BFG T/A Radial carcass. I've run these tires on OT vehicles for years and never had a problem. So, I should have working tires in about 10 days or so.

 

This same thing happened to me when I bought four new tires for my Hotrod from Coker. At the time I was so worn out after dealing with the problem that I just wanted to forget it. In hindsight, I should’ve posted my tale of woe to save others from beating their heads looking for non existent causes.

The bottom line is: terrible “Wobble de la muerte” at sixty. After looking for the cause in all of the wrong places, i.e., suspension, wheels, etc. I drove forty miles to have them road force balanced only to discover that one tire needed 8 ounces and another just over a pound! Needless to say, they wouldn’t put that much weight on because it would be lethal if it ever came loose at speed.

I sent screenshots of the tire machine readouts to Coker and they sent replacement tires with no hassle. I can’t say enough good about the customer service rep I worked with through all of this.

The replacement tires had the same problem! Took them to my local garage thinking all they needed was static balancing. Hah!

Had them road forced balanced again, and same problem, just not as severe but needing too much weight.

In talking with the rep, I discovered that they can road force balance the tires before they ship them out. They did on the replacements for the replacements and I finally got tires that worked!

I got reimbursed from Coker for all of the money I spent on having them road force balanced, $40.00 a tire. So you may want to have a chat with your rep about that.

I won’t buy tires from Coker again but it has to do with product, not service.

 

Coker had a good reputation for many years. They shouldn't send "defective" products out and even if they force balance beforehand, I certainly wouldn't want them. They obviously know they have a problem.

 

In November 2018, Corky sold Coker Tire and its parent company, Coker Group, to Irving Place Capital.

They are an equity firm. Sometimes that is not good for a companies future. That may or may not be the case here.

 

Good move. If you have any difficulties with them. They will do anything they can to make it right.jmho. Snowman ⛄️

 

Sorry guys,,,,but my ignorance is showing .
What exactly is road force balancing ?
Sounds like a band aid for a piece of crap product?

Oh yeah,,,,,,every equity group that ever bought a successful business runs the original business product into the ground.

Tommy

 

I thought the Coker reproduction tires were mostly for display only? Seems like I remember reading that somewhere.

 

Tommy
This short video may help you understand the theory behind it. If you need more, there are a few more in depth vids on Youtube.

Jeff

 

I would say that after what I went through, that’s not a bad idea!