If you want to know how to balance a dually wheel to maximize your vehicle’s performance and extend its tire’s lifespan, you’re in the right place. 

Balancing your wheels is vital to ensuring the equal distribution of your vehicle’s weight around the rim of each tire, and it’s crucial when operating a medium- or heavy-duty dually truck. These vehicles haul dense loads and experience constant daily use.

Balancing a dually wheel is not quite as easy as a standard variant, but you can master it with some tips and by investing in quality equipment. On that note, let’s explore how to balance a dually wheel. We’ll also discuss why you must master the skill and reveal some tools to make handling wheel balancing much easier. 

Why Should You Improve Your Dually Wheel Balancing?

Before we reveal how to balance a dually wheel for optimal performance, let’s first address why doing so is important. 

Remember, your tires bear a lot of weight, especially if your dually truck hauls a trailer or a load of cargo. The extra pair of tires will definitely help your truck manage its weight, but if you want it to perform well and be efficient, you need to make sure your wheels have proper balance.

If a wheel is out of balance, the truck’s weight doesn’t have equal distribution around the tire’s circumference. That can place excessive strain on the tire, speed up the wearing process, or even lead to a dangerous blowout. Even what appears to be a minor imbalance can have a major effect on a tire’s longevity and the vehicle’s performance.

The good news is that a wheel imbalance is rather easy to detect. It is not difficult to remedy either, provided you have the right tools and a little know-how. 

Signs You Have a Dually Wheel Imbalance

The signs of a dually wheel imbalance are almost identical to those of an imbalance on a standard wheel. With that said, your dually wheel may have an imbalance if you notice any of the following:

• The truck vibrates at high speeds
• The tires are showing uneven wearing 
• It’s experiencing low fuel efficiency
• The suspension feels off or seems less stable than usual recently

If you experience any of these red flags, your truck may have one or more imbalanced wheels. Imbalances can occur even if your tires are newer, so don’t use tire age to rule one out. 

Properly Centering Wheels is Key for Balancing 

Wheels can’t balance unless they are first centered. Balancing equipment relies on precise wheel centering. The outer beads of the wheel, in particular, must be concentric with the wheel bearings. That results in a level tire and wheel assembly. 

Modern wheel balancing systems take much of the guesswork out of balancing dually wheels, but they aren’t foolproof. The mechanic can’t correct the imbalance if the user doesn’t center the wheel correctly on the balancer. 

Manufacturers make many types of adapters. These help technicians center the wheel on the balancing equipment, ensuring the resolution of any imbalances. Allpart Supply offers adapters for various wheel sizes and types, including many popular dually wheels. 

Balancing vs. Aligning Wheels

Like regular tires and wheels, dually wheels need to be in both proper balance and alignment. People sometimes use these phrases in place of one another, but doing so is incorrect. Each term refers to its own processes.

Balancing is all about even weight distribution across a tire. In contrast, aligning wheels involves adjusting angles. The goal of a wheel alignment is to ensure that the pairs of wheels are parallel to each other. During an alignment, a mechanic will also make sure they’re perpendicular to the ground.

In other words, the entirety of an aligned tire’s tread will contact the ground. Conversely, if your wheel is not well-aligned, a part of its tread will bear little to no weight. That will cause uneven wear and hinder the tire’s performance. 

Benefits of Using Wheel Balancing Adapters

The adapters we mentioned earlier are the key to balancing dually wheels. More specifically, you can do the following by investing in balancing adapters.

Elevate Wheel Balancing Results

Wheel balancing is all about precision. To achieve peak results, you must balance wheels with laser-like accuracy. But that’s impossible if you start balancing with an off-center wheel.

With the right balancing adapters that replicate the wheel mount on the vehicle, you can ensure that every dually wheel is perfectly centered before you start the balancing process. That will lead to better results and improved tire performance. 

Boost Wheel Balancing Efficiency

Wheel balancing adapters not only improve results but boost technician efficiency too. Whether balancing your own dually wheels or serving your customers, efficiency matters. The faster you can perform balancing, the sooner you can move on to the next task on your to-do list. 

As a business owner, the more efficiently you can get work done, the more customers you can serve. In other words, increasing efficiency and productivity will lead to higher profit margins and greater sales. That new set of wheel balancing adapters will pay for itself in no time. 

Reduce Wheel Weight Usage

While a single wheel weight isn’t terribly expensive, dozens of them can add up fast. Before you know it, what you think is an insignificant expense will impact your bottom line. 

Wheel balancing adapters can help you keep your wheel weight usage in check. Since your tires and wheels will be perfectly centered, you can more accurately balance them too, which means fewer wheel weights and less waste. 

Reduce or Eliminate Customer Comebacks

Wheel balancing adapters are especially useful for tire service centers and other businesses that offer dually wheel balancing. By investing in these affordable and useful devices, your business can drastically reduce customer comebacks. 

If you have ever had a customer drive a mile down the road only to whip their truck around and complain that their wheels are still imbalanced, you know how frustrating that experience can be. Not only did you let your customer down, but you may have damaged your shop’s reputation and hindered your ability to earn business in the future.

Wheel balancing adapters can help you keep customers happy and strengthen your brand image. Before you know it, your shop will become the go-to spot for dually wheel balancing. 

Improve Shop Work with Wheel Balancing Adapters and Systems 

To transform your shop into a well-oiled machine that can balance any dually wheel with ease, consider investing in the following:

• ProMax MD Systems
• Haweka MD Adapters
• Eliminate Front Cone Mounting

As your go-to supplier for wheel balancing and alignment accessories, Allpart Supply can provide you with all these and more. We also offer accessories to improve your shop’s efficiency and productivity further.

How to Balance a Dually Wheel with Helpful Accessories

Now that you know how wheel balancing adapters can help you correct dually wheel imbalances, let’s review a few other products that will help speed up your efforts. 

If you want to up your dually wheel balancing game, check out Allpart Supply’s accessories, including our:

• Pressure Cups. These cups help you know if the tire pressure is correct before you begin the balancing process.
• Hub Centering Discs. These discs replicate the vehicle’s hub mount exactly to resolve static unbalance issues for precision balancing results. 
• MD Flange Plate. These plates replicate the vehicle’s lug mount and provide even pressure from the front of the wheel to resolve dynamic unbalance issues for precision balancing results. 
• Wheel Lifts. The lift will help you safely lift heavy wheels and tires onto the balancer.
• Quick Nuts. Quicknuts speed the process of mounting wheels on the balancer and ensure that wheels and adapters are locked in the correct position during balancing.

These parts and accessories will help your staff work faster, safer, and more efficiently. Once you balance a dually wheel with Allpart Supply components, you’ll never want to balance Duallys or any wheels without them. 

Get the Job Done Right with Allpart Components

If you’re ready to learn more about our dually wheel balancing parts and accessories, contact the Allpart Supply team today.