Centramatics

I dunno they have been pushing the product since the late 80's and everyone thought it was a cat's meow. If it was truly the cat's Meow all the tractors would have them as standard equiptment by now. Thats one of the freedoms of being a O/O you get to try something out.

Regarding drive tires or trailer tires getting damage, they will certainly ball up blacktop pavement through the entire thread and into the metal belting beyond ruining the tire after a panic braking event or equivilant if you allowed it to lock up due to not having ABS, or a lack of working properly ABS or another situation forced that axle or associated tires not to turn with any authority and so you ruin it.

Driver training on what passes for a slipper surface to force a semi to decide to consent to the ABS situation and activate it enough is sufficient to stay in the driver's mind for a while. Hopefully he never uses ABS out there. That means usually a situation has developed past the point of precision professional remedy and regresses to more primitive methods inflicting great physics forces on the poor semi forced to under go it.

My first big rig ABS was something really stupid on my part. Was in MO, off the interstate onto a smaller divided road, saw a diner up top a hill came up the ramp which turned into gravel and she skated and danced everywher spraying gravel on everyone from one end of property and to the other buildings, cars and trucks and all.

Guess who was the center of attention after that little stupid incident and about how much was paid up in glass and doors and paint etc. And that stupid truck did not really benefit from that application up the ramp either. She was at 70 at the bottom, 65 over the top and past 72 gaining as she fell down the other ramp towards blessed pavement. They thought I was trying to escape.

whoosh. So stupid I was. Epic.

They paved it within the month. Now this time we can get her stopped way better ya think?

 

They have worked very well for me and all the guys I know that use them. They have helped with ride and tire wear issues over the years for us. We even use them on the trailers. I believe it helps the equipment too cause less vibration is a good thing. Worth the money for sure. Wish they were cheaper? Yes.

 

Balance has nothing to do with whether they are steer tires or not. Balance has to do with uneven distribution or consistency of the compound injected into the mold. Balancing the weight results in less vibration. Less vibration results in less fatigue. Less fatigue results in better rest at night. Better rest results in less fatigue the next day. And the cycle goes on and on and on and....

 

Drive tires will get out of balance as they wear more than the steers will. The patterns on most drive tires will heel/toe with normal use and need rotation and balancing a few times in their service life. Centramatics will allow them to stay in balance between the rotations. Any tire as it wears looses the weight of the used/lost rubber so they have to be rebalanced here and there to compensate for that.

 

Some would say it is a waste of money, others would say they help. With regard to drives, I would incline to the former (the counterbalance medium is too limited for the mass of two wheels), with regard to steers to the latter (even though skeptics say that the medium is still too limited). Having said that, I have them on all tractor axles because one thing is certain, they could not hurt.

It is obvious that by using a large enough amount of counteract balancing beads instead, you can truly find the necessary counteract force that will stabilize way off balanced wheels, which may not be the case with Centramatrics.

I don't know if those beads are compromising the tire or rim in any other way. Not likely.

 

Take off any weights that are on already, install centromatics on every hub to remove all vibration you ever had, then get an alignment so the truck doesn't turn by itself and centromatics gyroscopically fine tune the alignment even more once you're rolling...worth every penny. If your reluctant, just put a pair on the steers, I bet u feel a big difference. Once you put them on the drives the whole truck calms down a lot. I waited 2 years to put them on the drives for the same reluctancy, if I knew it made that much difference I would have done them all at once and I would probably still have that whole set of goodyear drives that ate themselves and shook my teeth loose

 

My tires longevity may also be attributed to the centramatcs; over 220 K or so on steers and over 350K miles on drives replaced at 3-5 32nd/inch. I recently bought a full set of tires for the trailer.
I will not add centramtics there, I'll throw in those beads instead.