July/August 2018

W hile it’s great to see a familiar face coming into your workshop, this is very rarely the case when it’s a recent customer coming back to complain about the job you did on their car. Not only can this be an uncomfortable source of conflict but more often than not, it can end up costing the workshop time in exploring and correcting the fault again or money in order to maintain goodwill with the customer. Sadly, when it comes to fitting tyres, the returning customer scenario is all too familiar but in many instances it’s down to the little understood, but easily solvable, issue of Road Force. Why is this a problem? When new cars roll out of the factory doors, they’ve been given a great deal of care and attention to ensure they provide the very best levels of ride, handling and comfort. After all, having spent thousands of pounds, customers want more than just that nice new-car smell. Part of this preparation includes manufacturers’ assessing the wheel and tyre assemblies for the highest levels of ride comfort. However, when drivers have their tyres replaced in the aftermarket, workshops don’t have access to multi-million pound uniformity machines and therefore sometimes there is a ride quality or vibration issue which is noticed by the customer. So what causes the problem? Tyre technology is often overlooked and not understood by many modern motorists. Rather than being a squidge of rubber that’s simply pumped into a mould, they are highly engineered products with dozens of individual components which form a vital element of the overall suspension system. The sidewall of a tyre can be thought of as a series of springs and due to the way they are manufactured, all tyres will have a degree of variability in the stiffness of the sidewall. When the tyre rolls along the road surface, the stiffer sections of the tyre will not flex as much and therefore produce a vibration input. This irregularity is called Road Force Variation and is often the cause of a vibration felt after fitting replacement tyres, and even after they have been balanced. Is there a way to cure Road Force Variation? In the past, when customers returned to workshops to complain about vibrations from their new tyres, the most common course of action was for technicians to simply refit them, cross their fingers and hope that it would be cured. If it wasn’t, they’d either try again, blame the tyre manufacturer or try another set. Hardly a scientific or fool proof approach. Nowadays however, Road Force Variation problems can be minimised in a measured manner using proper diagnostics, with no guesswork whatsoever. The equipment that has made this possible is the Hunter Road Force diagnostic wheel balancer. Unlike traditional wheel balancers, the Hunter system applies a load roller to the wheel and tyre assembly and effectively takes it on a test drive. During this process, the system calculates and identifies where the tyre’s stiff spot and the wheel rim’s low spot are. The two points then need to be simply matched and the vibration issue will be minimised, removing any guesswork. The latest Hunter diagnostic balancer, the Road Force Elite (RFE) also includes a new ‘vision system’ which automatically scans the profile of the wheel rim, allowing more accurate placement of balance weights as well helping to hide them behind spoke locations. Top Technician and Top Garage 2018 sponsors Pro-Align show how garages and customers benefit from Road Force Balancing SMOOTH OPERATOR JULY/AUGUST 2018 AFTERMARKET 27 TOP TECHNICIAN – TOP GARAGE 2018 Below: Road Force Balancing www.aftermarketonline.net Sponsored by: