Motor Home Tire Rotation & Balance, tire balance Options

[Butch]

The tire issue has been beat to death, but I feel the tires on our motor home need to be rotated. Now I have read, somewhere, that motor home tires do not have to be rotated. Having called my heavy duty mechanic on this issue, he stated that the tires should be rotated and balanced every 10,000 miles. He then proceeded to inform me as to how they balance the tires. They dismount the tire and place a bag of powder inside and re-mount the tire. This is where I have a problem. I have spoke to a friend, who is a manager of a Ryder Truck Rental establishment, and he state to me that the powder is not a good way to balance tires. I have also spoke to our local supt of highways, he also did not favor this form of balancing tires. I do not have any vibration, so I was going to have the tires just rotated. Before I do this, I would like to pose the question, "any ideas" from other motor home owners ?? Your thoughts and opinions would be greatly appreciated. The tire size is: 235/80/22.5 Thank you.

[Browzin]

Butch
Powered Equal. hub centric, MAGNUM Tire Balancing Compound, EZ Balance, Centramatic dynamic wheel balancers, etc. are all accepted different methods of balancing tires. The Powder that you are probably being told about is "Equal balance powder".
I am not a big fan of any of the balance systems that amount to something just being dumped into the tire and then letting gravitational pull move it into points of balance.

Now to try an help answer your question; ALL TIRES regardless of what they are on should be CORRECTLY rotated and balanced for best life and wear of the tire.
Now the method used is becoming some what controversial with all the new systems that being developed.
Use what ever method you are most comfortable with. Below is a couple of links to the Michelin and Good Year tire web sites, they offer there own theories on this.
I am old school and still shave balance the tires on our track cars(only thing that I find acceptable at speeds in excess of 150 mhp "I'm trying to teach the grandson how to win races from my years of experience from the school of hard knocks").
http://www.michelinrvtires.com/michelinrvtires/hom_us.jsp
http://www.goodyear.com/rv/