Have been fighting balancing issues on my KM2's for some time now and am entertaining the idea of getting some centramics to try since it seems many have had success with them. My only concern is noise at low speeds. I don't think it should be a prob. with the sound of the cummins but was wondering if anybody has tried the balancemasters since they use mercury and are not suppose to make noise like the centramics. Any thoughts or insight by users would be appreciated.

 

i just bought the centeramtics, no noise. if you are playing with them un mounted ya they make noise, but on the truck they don't. i have some balance issues too with my vortracs, but it didn't help much. i am thinking i have one tire that is either not mount properly, needs to be turned on the rim 180, or its out of round. i had driven my truck much so i never noticed it much until i was on the highway. i also left my tires balanced, and i think they work better if you take the weights off. needless to say, i think once i check for out of round, it should clear up any balance issues.i think they seem to be a good product.

 

i'm having balancing issue's as well with the KM2's that have been on my trk for about 3-4 wks. had them balanced twice using lead wts...no improvement.
i now have 8oz. of balancing beads in each tire, checked alignment(toe was out), over all condition of steering and suspension and STILL have an issue from 62mph to 70mph. this condition started after the KM2's were installed. this balance issue may be a tire or tires that are out of round. i can actually see the hood shacking when at the speeds mentioned. the trk will be going to a reputable tire dealer in new orleans to be evaluated.

 

in the process now to have dealer take back these KM2's

 

I have had the Centarmatics for about 4 yrs. , if you have a quite enough area & listen hard you may hear them , but not enough to be an issue .
The BalanceMasters cost a bought $100 more , because they use mercury .

 

any luck with balancing those KM2's?

 

If you have bad tires, lead weight nor balancers will work, if your tires are good, lead weight is a lot cheaper.

 

Mercury?! Like the toxic stuff they don't let you have in thermometers anymore?

I've been considering a set of centramatics for a while now, I'm still on the fence. Anybody have a picture of them installed on stock wheels?

 

Centramatics do not use mercury , the use durlast beads .
I think that the Balancemasters [ use mercury ] may preform better / longer , but that's a guess .
There is no way that using lead weights are cheaper , for many reasons , during the life of a tire , they should be rebalanced , then while most people will go through many sets of tires , then you can take them with you to your next truck and also a big one , is that the tires will last longer because of the constant dynamic balancing of the tires , all this adds up to much cheaper than lead weights & the cost of rebalanced .

 

Beads and balancers only static balance, who just gets a static balance anymore? For $200 you can get a lot of balance jobs.

 

At $10 per tire, $200 only buys 20 tires worth of balancing at my local discount tire shop. You can buy a lifetime (life of tire) balance for $15 each, but then you have to keep going back to those fools.

Even if I had the Centramatics I'd still pay for the dynamic balance when I purchased the tires. I'm looking at them more for the maintainence of balance over the life of the tire. I rotate them myself, but I can't balance at home.

I've got just under 30K on my stock tires, I haven't had them balanced at all and thet still seem ok. I'm debating on replacing them this year or next because of their age and sidewall damage from the wife driving by braile.

 

I have taken my KM2s in for road force balancing and two were under 10 pounds of road force and one was like 45 and one was like 65. So BFG sent two new tires and it was fine for about 100 miles then it shook again. I took it back where they roadforced it again said the tires were out of balance and rebalanced them it was good for about 50 miles now it shakes again. I am sick and tired of keep having to take the truck in for balancing. It was in about 8 times before I had it roadforced and three times for roadforce now. The 200 dollars for centramics sounds good to me as I value my time and dont want to waste it at Discount Tire where nobody seems to know whats going on. All I know is I will NEVER BUY A SET OF BFG TIRES AGAIN, this is stupid NO QUALITY CONTROL WHATSOEVER!!! I am very unhappy with the tires so far. Anybody have any advise on TOYO tires??

 

Sounds like their weights fell off or your front must be way out of wack to wear them in 50 miles.

FYI the centramatics won't fix bad tires/wheels.

 

in the defense of "Pikeman", i too have BFG KM2's recently installed(4 weeks?) and also had the shaking/balancing issue from the start. i'm in the process of having these POS tires removed from my truck through a participating warranty tire dealer in new orleans before it cause's any or more wear on my rig. i'm willing to go with street tires vs these poor quality tires.

i can't believe that michelin would allow tires of poor quality to leave their factory

 

You can't seriously think a mud tire will be smooth like a street tire? Sounds like you got the wrong tire for the job.