Right-on, Frank and it's not just the lights that take a beating. Here's a column I wrote a few months ago........
DO BOAT TRAILER TIRES NEED TO BE BALANCED?
By Capt. Mike Schoonveld
If you are a trailer boat owner, you’ve probably already made up your mind about the question posed in the title of this essay. Some say yes, some say no. What do the experts say? Even they give mixed answers.
For the record, no tires whether its on a boat trailer, a camper, go-cart or an 18-wheeler have to be balanced to work. Put an unbalanced tire on a car, truck or trailer, tighten the lug nuts and hit the road. The wheel and tire will go around and around and around for a long time and without much issue. The question then becomes, “How long and at what expense.”
The immediate result of having an out of balanced wheel is tire vibration. You’ve probably ridden in cars which have lost a wheel balancing weight and felt the vibration it gives to the car. It’s annoying. It wears out the tread on the tire, shortening its useful life. Is that all?
No! That thump, thump or rattle, rattle you feel or hear as the car drives down the highway is “felt” by all the components of the vehicle - bearings, brakes, steering mechanism along with the car’s frame, bolts, seats and other car parts. It doesn’t break any of them immediately, but it works on them continuously. You know how a new car often feels tight and quiet while a well-used car often feels loose and has a few errant rattles? The rougher the roads it travels, the sooner it loses that new car “ride” and an out-of-balance tire can make a smooth highway feel like a cobblestone street.
Which has a better suspension system, your car or your boat trailer? Undoubtedly, your car. Just because you aren’t (or shouldn’t be) riding in your boat and don’t personally feel the bumps and rattles the road or an out-of-balance wheel delivers to the boat through the trailer’s rudimentary suspension system, doesn’t mean your boat and trailer aren’t being affected by them.
It’s comparable to the ancient form of torture, death by a thousand cuts. One little nick does little harm; a thousand can be fatal. One little rattle won’t harm a boat as it’s trailered, but I’m not talking just one or even a thousand.How about a million? The tires on my boat trailer are 25 inches in diameter. Crude math says one of my trailer tires has to travel 1240 miles to rotate a million times. I have four tires, however, so if each of them is unbalanced, my boat trailer and boat will accumulate a million unnecessary and potentially bad vibrations every 310 miles or so.
Sure, there are other variables that will affect tire wear and the smoothness of the ride. How fast is the average speed? Am I going on one 310-mile trip or 155 two-mile trips? How many curves and corners are involved? How old are the tires? Is the road pavement or gravel? Is the air temperature 40 degrees or 80? All of this affects the vibration and tire wear, but only the wheel’s balance can be controlled. Most anglers pull their boats when and where they want to fish, regardless of the weather and road conditions.
We’ve all seen boat trailers parked alongside the road with either a flat tire or perhaps worse, a bearing failure. I doubt any of these incidents are directly attributable to improperly balanced tires, but how many are partially attributable? No way to know. A “thousand-cut death” isn’t attributable to any one cut, either.
I just retired a trailer with over 200,000 miles on it. The new trailer came with unbalanced tires. The first thing I did was take the tires and rims to a local tire shop to get them balanced. For $40, I have the peace of mind that says there’s just one less thing to worry about as I’m trailering my boat down the highway.
THE END
