I have a set of 36 X 12.50 tsl swampers and they have the death wobble, I've never had them balanced so today I thought it was high time that I did. I went to sears since they offer life time balancing for the life of my tires. Well they said they can't balance them because their weights are not big enough to place the right weight in one spot and they would have to put weight all around the rim throwing it way off. I checked into sweet'n'low and thats fine but it will clump into poop if I blow a bead in the snow. What else can I do to balance them? I've heard of people putting golf balls in the tires does anyone know if this works ? Or do you know another rigging ways?

Thanks

Try the search feature.

Okeydokey, I'm gonna climb right up on the soapbox here for a minute or two...cuz I'm dealing with the same thing, as are many Swamper owners.
Yes. They are heavy. I work at a tire shop, and deal with balancing tires all the time. For us at the shop typically 3 oz is normal, by the time you get to 6 oz that's a bit heavy. TWO of my 15-39.5-15's are over 20 oz, one is 25 and one is 40 oz off. There is no way on earth you can make that up accurately. Even if you paper the inside of the wheel with tape-a-weights and line the bead edge with tack-on lead you'd still be hard pressed to get an accurate balance, and if you don't have beadlocks and air down a lot for wheeling- tire slips on wheel- then you're double fawked because now all that weight is on the wrong side, if you slip it 180 degrees.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the best way to deal with egg shaped Swampers is to patch balance them. That is, you find how bad they are off, maybe rotate on the wheel 180 or 120 a couple times, get a number, then put a heavy patch inside the tire to compensate. Interco is sending me some patch weights free of charge since I called to complain today. Great customer service, I didn't even have to complain that hard. :D Without the weights I am screwed, 15" wheels on one ton axles mean no tape a weights inside the wheels, and you can only get about 10 oz of lip weights before you're putting them on the wrong half of the wheel.

The worst part of this whole affair for you will be all the dismount/ mount/ balance mumbo jumbo to get the patch weights where they need to be, but you should be set until the tires wear out once it's done. If your local tire store doesn't have patch weights (most won't) they come from TECH supplies or Interco if you ask nice. Interco 337-334-3814, ask for warranty dept.

[/soapbox off]

balance them right after you run down the freeway- hot- or balancing can actually be done on the rig loosen your front caliper and see which end goes down add weight accordinly- but that way is time consuming- Jess :D

Slagburn, what happens when you chunk a tire? Do ou have to redo the weights again?

Six golf balls in each of my bias 36x12.50/15 TSLs, and I'm smooth down the freeway up to 70-75. Was smooth up to 85-90 when newer, but they've chunked up a bit now and I've got a bunch of dirt and stuff inside the wheels too.

I have no other balancing stuff on my wheels.

Prior to the golf balls, I could not do 60 on the freeway without the rig feeling like it was going to self-destruct.

BB's, golf balls, centermatics, oh and you can go on the patch.

what id like to know is if anyone has tried having their Swampers TRUED with one of those machines that rotates the tire and cuts tiny peices of rubber off the tread at speed until its a completely round tire.

i wonder how wellthis would work, especialy since most swampers that cause incurable shakes and wobbles are actually out of round....

so anyone try this...seem like a logical way to go, although, i cant think of many tire shops with that piece of equippment, but ive never asked around....
anyone?

John,

I know/heard of a guy in VA Beach area that has done this. My friend has seen a set of swampers trued and said a very significant amount of tread was removed to do it.

Hey CJ, thanks for the response....thats too bad it takes that much rubber to do it...

i mean, i hate to bitch about street manners, but i mean, how much more difficult would it be for Interco to actually make a round tire? its not like it would hurt business

also dude, ive sent you a couple emails regarding stock car parts swaybar stuff...i dont know if it was the right email adress though...coulda been outdated or whatever....can you gimme a working one? id like to ask a few things regarding that...
peace
~John

Why try? they are swampers they will never be balaned good.:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Jeepmangled87
Why try? they are swampers they will never be balaned good.:rolleyes:

its a good point, but for those of us who daily drive em, i guess ya cant resist...two pairs of tires would be better, but oh well.
some people do have varying degrees of success with things like the internal patches, golf bolls, truing maybe, so who knows, maybe we can figure it out one day.
not much you can do about a hugely out of round tire though i think. they prolly wouldnt be all that bad if they would just make em round in the first place, but i guess its too much to ask apparently, or who knows.
theres just no tire like a bais swamper off road, that is marginal on road....youd think with all the technology and whatnot, someone could make a tough tire thats not that bad onroad.
i personally dont care that much, but id like to be able to go faster than 55mph without a huge amount of oscillation from the front.
~John

6 golf balls eh, cbassett. My worst death wobble (and dont laugh) is at 20-35
I know its not too big of deal, but I find more loose bolts since here in greeley, co. all the streets are like 30 m.p.h, so I either drive too slow or way
fast.(dont want a run in with the law) I have 10X15 rims, got off a chevy, I dont think they are too out, but maybe more than meets the eye.?

I have some golf balls in mine- weird, because when you spin the tires on the balancer it's obvious where a noise (like golf balls) is coming from. This balancer (Hunter DSP9500) spins them up to oh, say, 40mph or so. But the golf balls are still clanking around at the bottom and never distribute themselves around the tire. Maybe on the road they do, but not on the balancer. I would guess each one weighs 2.5 oz at most, and that's a lot of golf balls to make up 40 oz.
The Interco guy actually said they consider 10% of tire weight or more to be defective, when balanced...think about that for a minute. Also, the two tires that had the worst out of round hop balanced with the least weight, 2 and 5 oz.
So supposedly a buddy from Down South's dad has a real nifty way of truing tires at home, done it a buncha times y'all! Ya just take a cinderblock, a new one so's its got them sharp edges, not an old one like's been holdin' up yer sister's house for 5 years... anyways you takes one'a them and spin yer outta round tire up real fast on a good sturdy jack, 3rd gear is best. Then ya lets 'er down real slow like on that sharp block and it'll take the extra rubber right off.

I swear to God, that's what somebody told me today. Good luck and you didn't hear it here.

Originally posted by Slagburn
....So supposedly a buddy from Down South's dad has a real nifty way of truing tires at home, done it a buncha times y'all! Ya just take a cinderblock, a new one so's its got them sharp edges, not an old one like's been holdin' up yer sister's house for 5 years... anyways you takes one'a them and spin yer outta round tire up real fast on a good sturdy jack, 3rd gear is best. Then ya lets 'er down real slow like on that sharp block and it'll take the extra rubber right off.

I swear to God, that's what somebody told me today. Good luck and you didn't hear it here.


Just what I want, a 40 lb cinderblock to go flying at 35 mph. :rolleyes:

Sounds like that guy who got killed when he had a friend of his drive the truck while he was underneath listening for a noise. He ended up wrapped ariound the d-shaft.

Yup, sounds like a future Darwin award winner to me, okay, so you've got your truck up on jackstands, cuz it's locked front and rear and you don't have twin stick, with one corner on a floor jack, and your buddy in the cab, no, even better, another concrete block on the gas pedal cuz you're buddy's busy humping his sister, and you're going to ease that Sears Craftsman 10-year old floor jack down real slow (yeah-right) until the tire just contacts that concrete block enough to shave off rubber? I can see the news headlines now, lifted truck drives through trailer house, killing Bubba and his sister Joline. Truck owner Billy Bob was quoted as saying "It was pandamonium! That 'ol truck just took off on through there like a billy goat chasing a hound dog in heat!"

I still say three live chickens in each tire will cure all of your balance problems......

I've got the same 36x12.50 SX's.

They don't balance, tried, took about 20oz of weight to "balance" one of them. of course, it still wobbles.

I just put up with it. I get a wobble at 60, 70, and 80mph, they all last for about 3mph then go away.

Originally posted by 4Bangler
Yup, sounds like a future Darwin award winner to me, okay, so you've got your truck up on jackstands, cuz it's locked front and rear and you don't have twin stick, with one corner on a floor jack, and your buddy in the cab, no, even better, another concrete block on the gas pedal cuz you're buddy's busy humping his sister, and you're going to ease that Sears Craftsman 10-year old floor jack down real slow (yeah-right) until the tire just contacts that concrete block enough to shave off rubber? I can see the news headlines now, lifted truck drives through trailer house, killing Bubba and his sister Joline. Truck owner Billy Bob was quoted as saying "It was pandamonium! That 'ol truck just took off on through there like a billy goat chasing a hound dog in heat!"

I've had all kinds of problems and luck balancing.

1) I used BBs, but I think material inside the tire, whether it's BBs, golf balls, equal, or whatever, would work best. The patch sounds like it would work quite well also, although that does not take into account imbalance in the wheel itself, which if you have beadlocks can be signifigant. Seems like some sort of self adjusting system would work best.

2) Even if you get that sorted out, as I did, you will probably find that it does not remove the death wobble problem. If it is anything like my problem, it was not actually caused by the imbalance (which on mine generally just resulted in an absurdly rough ride), but is actually the result of the flat spotting. I found that I had no death wobble problems when I had no flat spotting. It got to the point where I eventually bought another set of tires, so I could swap my swampers on just before a run, but before that when I got it home I'd throw it on stands just so they wouldn't flat spot. The DW can be greatly reduced by making sure that everything in the suspension is really tight, with no play in shackles, etc etc, but I always found that it was the flat spotting that set it off. The sort of bottom line is that once something that big and heavy starts doing a dance, it's going to dance, the trick is to prevent it from ever starting in the first place.

Anyway, I hope some of this helps in some small way.

Originally posted by coiledcj7
6 golf balls eh, cbassett. My worst death wobble (and dont laugh) is at 20-35
I know its not too big of deal, but I find more loose bolts since here in greeley, co. all the streets are like 30 m.p.h, so I either drive too slow or way
fast.(dont want a run in with the law) I have 10X15 rims, got off a chevy, I dont think they are too out, but maybe more than meets the eye.?


That's slow! Like Chad mentioned, that wobble may be coming from the tires flatspots; which tend to go away after a couple miles of driving (however, in <30 mph driving around town, it's taken alot longer for the tires to warm up and round out).
It's possible you have one waay out of round tire in the front. Have a buddy ride with you and watch the passenger-side tires while you watch the driver-side tires when driving to the point they get really bumpy. Move the two bumpiest tires to the rear of your rig, so reduce their affect on steering. Try 6 or 7 balls in each tire.
I actually got 3 of 4 tires behaving with 5 balls each, and one hopper that took 6 to make settle down. I stuck 6 in each tire anyway just for consistency.

Now way in hell I'd "true" a Swamper. The lugs are so soft, those suckers are out of true after the first trip over the rocks.

Equal? It's too expensive, and not worth losing unless you run beadlocks. Even then, I'd just stick golf balls in the tire. The balls are a great novelty too, when rolling through parking lots; the tires sound like one of those Lotto machines that they draw the winning #s from! :D

cbasset makes another couple of good points:

1) it really helps to have the worse offenders (in out of roundness) on the rear of the rig. I eventually sorted out which were worst, marked them, and then made sure they always went on back.

2) DW usually happens at slow speeds. I always found that because I was going slow, 'waiting for the flat spots to go away' simply wasn't an option - it took too long, and by the time they evened out I was either going to be in the ditch or arrested.

Chad

Originally posted by cbassett

The balls are a great novelty too, when rolling through parking lots; the tires sound like one of those Lotto machines that they draw the winning #s from! :D

:D

SO how many golf balls is too many, #6 keeps comming up as the ticket. As you mentioned adding an extra ball to your tires with 5 didnt hurt.

I should paint some golf balls black and sell them on ebay with ballancing instructions. :D Or cut out the midle man (http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/newthread.php?s=&action=newthread&forumid=13)

Well I just got back from the Tire shop. I took them down to a place that does semi tires as well . They stuck some huge weights on and moved the worse tires to the rear (good call). So far so good , in the city, but I'm going wheeling this weekend so we'll see if it was 30 bucks well spent or just toilet paper. I'll let you know when I get back if the problem came back to haunt me.
Thanks for all the plugs.

Ryan :D

used to work for a guy as a mechanic and his Father owned a Fleet of Semi's...........for Semi Tractor Tires they had this Blue stuff they would pump in the tire's That would balance them while driving down the road........I put that in my old Swampers and worked like a Charm.........NOW here is the bad news.....The Guy went out of business and I dont know what the heck it was called..............Check out some Semi Tractor Tire Shops and see if you can locate it

oh yea..............My Current Tires tend to cup on the front end..............I know I know something is out of aligment..........However to true them up I rotote cupped tire to rear and do a Big ole Burn out every once in a while

I found a link to this site for a glass beed like product.

http://www.counteractbalancing.com/


The site is under construction, but you can still view their pamphlet.

How many golf balls would it take to balance a 42" TSL?????

Originally posted by ashmanjeepXJ


:D

SO how many golf balls is too many, #6 keeps comming up as the ticket. As you mentioned adding an extra ball to your tires with 5 didnt hurt.

I should paint some golf balls black and sell them on ebay with ballancing instructions. :D Or cut out the midle man (http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/newthread.php?s=&action=newthread&forumid=13)


LMAO! I've mentioned the golf balls solution "over there" a few times. I've gotten some interesting PMs from folks that think I'm off my rocker! :D


Coiled: Good luck on your balancing. My Swampers, like the MTRs they replaced, spin on the wheels every time I go out. That equals $30 down the tubes for you if your tires spin on the wheels. That's a big reason i stick to the golf balls ( no trips to the tire store, only a couple $ for the life of the tires to balance).


TJ Kid,
Your mileage will vary with any set of Swampers: 6 balls work great for my Swampers, but another set may take more or less. Just experiment and use what you need. Were i you, I'd mount and drive them with no golf balls first. Identify the worst ones first, as mentioned above, then start adding balls to the tires.

You guys have mentioned several things to throw in your swampers, but you forgot one - mud balls. You don't even have to put it in. Just get into a deep, nasty mud hole and pop a bead. Yank it out, re-seat the tire and drive. The tire will do the rest. :D This used to happen to me before beadlocks. When I pulled the tires off the rims to weld in the beadlocks, I had mud balls galore.

My heep is not on the road (for the good of the general public) so I don't have to worry about balancing. Actually, my :jeep: is better than some of the junk I see on the road.

I check at a semi truck shop and they put in a stuff called sweet'n'low or equal and thats stuff fine if you run beadlocks, but if you bust a bead or get any h2o in there its toasted oats, plus at 17 bucks a tire to put it in, damn I'm not rich.

Originally posted by 4Bangler
I can see the news headlines now, lifted truck drives through trailer house, killing Bubba and his sister Joline. Truck owner Billy Bob was quoted as saying "It was pandamonium! That 'ol truck just took off on through there like a billy goat chasing a hound dog in heat!" [/B]

Howd you know I have a sister named Joline

QUOTE"
Well I just got back from the Tire shop. I took them down to a place that does semi tires as well . They stuck some huge weights on and moved the worse tires to the rear (good call). So far so good , in the city, but I'm going wheeling this weekend so we'll see if it was 30 bucks well spent or just toilet paper. I'll let you know when I get back if the problem came back to haunt me.
Thanks for all the plugs.