I got a set of recaps for my truck and my rim can only have weight added to one side. The lady at the store told me they couldn't be balanced because of this. Is this true?

 

What's a recap? I've heard of retreads.

And when you say the weights can only be placed on one side, does that mean inside vs outside?

 

It's a re tread. They take old tires and glue a new tread on them. And they normally but weights on the outside of the rim or on the back side of the rim. And my rims can only take weights on the back side and they say they can't be balanced like that.

 

This is called a "static balance", they won't be balanced well. You do have options though.

1 - Glue on wheel weights. You can achieve good results by having them hammer on wheel weights to the inside lip, and using stick on weights just behind the wheel center.

2 - Powder balance. Anywhere from poor to excellent results can be had with balancing compounds (liquid or powder) or other media (like airsoft beads).

These are probably you two best options, but if the tires are not round, they will never drive well. I don't know what the quality of your re-tread tires is like.

 

What tires do you have on there that you ended up getting re-treaded? I am going to hope it ended up costing you significantly less than just replacing them completely.

 

I've always had my tires balanced with just weights on the backside. Never had an issue. I tell them to use the stick on weights.

 

I paid 365 for my retreads and just put them on my stock rims for now.

 

If you put the tires on stock wheels, you should be able to put weights on both inner and outer beads. Are the wheels alloys or steel? If alloys, they need to use a wheel weight for alloys, in most cases the alloy wheel weight has a larger "opening" to fit over the lip of the wheel.

If this is a regular tire shop they should know this and not have a problem balencing a tire.

It has absolutly nothing to do with being a recap/retread at all, you balance them all the same, unless of course the tire was not capped properly, then your putting on pounds instead of ounces.

 

I was thinking the same thing... stock rims can be balanced either way, so I'm guessing the shop you took it to is not that great.

 

originally i wasnt getting them put on stock rims but in the end i decided to so I could drive home with them