Radial Pull - Diesel Forum

rfalcone · 10-13-2003, 07:45 PM

My truck is driving me crazy...

I have been to the local dealership for a front end alignment twice in about 15,000 miles. The guys at the dealership assure me that the beast is within specs. I put a set of BFG A/Ts on about 10,000 miles ago. The truck hasn't been the same since. The ride is good, the tire wear is perfect. The dealership told me about "radial pull." Ok fine, I went back to Discount Tire for a rotation. I told the guy at Discount what I was experiencing. Upon his suggestion we rotated only the passenger side. This improved the pulling to the right. I went back and told him. Then we rotated the driver side tires....a small improvement after that. It still pulls to the right but not as bad.

Have any of you experienced a problem like this? Discount seems to be willing to exchange the tires after we do a test on them tomorrow morning. When we get to the bottom of this I will post the results. In the mean time, any problems with radial pull?

rdefrancisco · 10-13-2003, 09:07 PM

Pull occurs when the rolling diameter of the tire deviates from one sidewall to the other. For an example, lay a styrofoam cup on it's side and push it. You will notice it goes in a circle. When the carcass of the tire is slightly off inside the casing, the same thing happens to the tire - it wants to roll in a circle and causes a pull.

rfalcone · 10-14-2003, 08:41 PM

Thanks for the concise explanation Rich!

I went to Discount Tire this morning. They pulled all the wheels off the buggy and did what they called a "road force balance." They put each wheel and tire on a machine that looks like a balancer. This machine had a roller on it that would press against the tire to simulate load. Then they did the test. They did find one tire that was defective and replaced it without any hesitation. They remounted one of the suspect tires and put it back to within specs by marking the tire and the rim and and matching the marks. Then retested it. The results were more than satisfactory. The truck ran straight and true after that.

If any of you put on bigger tires (not that mine were bigger than stock) and they ask you if you want to road force balance them I suggest you do it, even though it may cost a few dollars more.