[Archived]

Thomas,

Send me the pic, I’ll add it to your post.

When they said to use your jacks, that would have been the time to run and not look back. Sorry you had problems and hope you can get it all sorted out.

[Jim/Chris]

Sorry to here about your mishap but that’s why I take my bus to Prevost for my tire needs because know what there doing. I might pay a few bucks more but piece of mind rolling down the road ” Priceless” I would go back and demand your hard earned bucks back or tell them your going to post pictures of their work!!!

[Archived]

Thanks for posting your experience . I am in the same area of Texas and appreciate the heads up.

[Greg]

doesn’t sound like they even change tires for a business.

[tom]

I would rather eat bees than leave my coach unattended for any kind of service. After the first few years of ownership it became apparent to me that nobody that services big vehicles is going to respect my coach as I do so to whatever extent possible I either stay and look over the tech’s shoulder, or I do the work myself.

Having watched tire changers abuse my polished aluminum wheels I was elated when I first learned of Equal because I not only don’t need to have ugly weights hammered or glued on my wheels, I also don’t need the tire man. Now I pick up my tires in my pickup truck and break the wheels down and change them myself. The sweat, dirt, and sore muscles are all a small price to pay to avoid watching some ape scratch my wheels.

Kudos to Prevost. They are very good at protecting your coach from damage.

[Archived]

TCI Tires in forth worth, tx is a good shop and they honor the FMCA tire program. We had all 8 replaced there in January. No they did not ask to use jacks, rubber grommet were replaced, new valve stems and we were very happy!

[Peter]

After putting on two sets of tires over the years, I found that for the first few months that it is not unusual for the tire pressure to need adjustment as the tires seat to the rims.

I’ve seen it recommended that the tires be rebalanced after a few thousand miles since the seating process effects the balance. Personally, I use Dynabeads (somewhat similar to Equal) so I have dynamic balancing.

Some manufacturers also recommend that the lug nuts be retorqued after some mileage…

[Roger]

You should always retorque wheel nuts after a run in period of 50-100 miles then again at 10,000 miles. Buy a torque stick and carry it with you for those over zealous tire tech’s who want to run your nuts on as tight as their impact wrench will go.

[Archived]

What torque setting Orren?

[Archived]

Do you know if prevost works with the fmca / michelin program? If not do you know if they let you bring them the tires to mount and ballance? The program makes a big difference in prices. Nearly 50% over what I have been quoted by others like pro tire. The mount/ballance price from big d was $25 mount and $35 ballance and the advantage price for the 315’s was $568. I have not seen the charge on my card yet so something could go wrong.

[Thomas]

I hope you never have to eat bees. I had to sell all my classic cars because I’m just not physically able to work on them anymore so I’m sure not going to be able to work on my bus. Unfortunately for me I’m a perfectionist so I’m almost always going to be dissapointed or worse. I was brought up with the idea that if a job was worth doing it was worth doing right.

[Archived]

Torque specs call for 450 ft./ lbs.

As to balancing a POG member once stated that after having tires installed he had the tire and wheel marked with a yellow wax pencil so he had a stripe to show the position of the tire relative to the wheel. I don’t remember if he or a Prevost tech then did a hard brake test and it showed the tire had rotated on the wheel.

The point being that balance weights are dependent on the wheel and tire never slipping relative to one another. The reason his tire slipped on the wheel could have been because it was recently installed the the bead lube was still slippery, or because that is what tires do on occasion. But using Centramatics or Balance Masters or balancing media in the tire eliminates the need for weights and the tires are always in balance.

[Thomas]

I look forward to finding out because big d does not use a torq wrench so I will want to torq them or find someone that can/will. I just need to know the right value first. Also one of my wheels took 16 ounces of weight. Seems very high to me. I would think that the wheel may need to be replaced if that is an abnormally high value. I was told the others took about 12 which again seem alot to me but I have never dealt with these large aloa wheels so maybe thats not out of line.

[Paul]

I’ll want to research “using Centramatics or Balance Masters or balancing media ” so I’ll be prepared for fixing this job and before I buy my tag’s when they come do.

[Susan]

Equal or balancing media costs about $10 per tire. No balancing is required, just throw a bag in the tire when it is being mounted. It comes with valve cores with special filters so the Schrader valves will seat and not lose air.

The alternative is Centramatics or Balance Masters which are just discs with sand or Mercury contained in a bead around the periphery. The concept is the same as balance media except you don’t have to replace them every time you change tires or get them serviced. I tend to prefer balance media because it is much less expensive given the number of times we change tires, although my coach came with Centramatics. They do work well.