Personally I think road force is a gimmick.
I originally bought a balancer because I got a bad balance every time from tire stores. If you have one that does a good job, that's gold.
I haven't found one that takes the time to get it right. They spend a couple minutes a tire, and you can't do a good job that fast. Plus they let their equipment get out of spec and they have really low rate help changing tires - so my guess is the roadforce balancer is just expensive/complicated equipment that still doesn't get used correctly. Not saying the machine isn't capable of doing a good job, but they don't do a good job with the simple equipment so I don't expect them to do better with the complex stuff.
About 5 years ago I bought a Lexus that had brand new tires from a dealership on it - they were purchased a few days before I bought the car. I didn't like the way they were balanced. I rebalanced them and they were perfect. I could tell whoever balanced them before didn't know what they were doing. I have never liked those tires all that well, but they now have 55,000 miles on them and could go another 20.
I bought another used car a couple months ago. It came with a bunch of receipts. The owner bought new tires a year ago - a month later was in the tire store complaining that the tires weren't balanced correctly. Tire store response is "the wheels are bent - recommend new wheels". I notice immediately the tires are out of balance. I put them on my balancer expecting to find bent wheels - wheels are perfect. Every tire is out of balance the exact same 1/2 ounce. That means the tire store had out of spec balancing equipment and it ***** to drive a car like that - the vibration constantly changes better to worse as the out of balance wheels align with each other while you are driving.
It takes me a few minutes, but I can get a set of tires so smooth that you cannot feel a thing - with my cheap chinese balancer - I doubt anybody at a shop can do better.
I've had a Hunter balancer for over 25 years. I bought it back when I figured it's the last one I will ever have to buy.
Having 11 vehicles, 3 trailers and a bobcat, I buy a ton of tires. Many these days have been out of round brand new (but still
balanced out).
About 1.5 years ago, I got used RF machine. Only paid $2600, so it's not impossible to find one "cheap". Needed new cooling fan, new bearings in force roller, some clean up, and I had my "Hunter Rep" recalibrate/check out the machine. Clean bill of health after that. He claims those machines are good for 40K or more balances, before they need work. You can look in the stats on the machine and see how many balances it has done over it's life, before you buy. Mine had close to 14K
Anyway, I've proved to myself that if done correctly, it definitely works. BUT, the largest benefit to me has been brand new tires. If a new perf tire RF's over 15, it goes back. If a truck tire RF's over 25, it goes back. Tire sellers have been pretty good about taking tires back, when I explain why I want an exchange. Many times, bad RF #'s go in hand with high balance weights, but not always.
Anyway. I've had a Chinese tire machine for over 20 years. I've added many items to help with low profile and nicer rims, like both side rams, tire bead "puller upper", and even a center mount kit.
Had to build my own mount for that one above
This thing allows you to not have to use pry bar to pull up bead. It mounts where std head goes.
I've dinged up plenty of nice rims with just trying to pry low profile beads over the edge .
And this thing really helps keep rim from spinning. Even using plastic inserts and gripping out edge of lower rim, sometimes the rim will spin, again trying to get a super low profile bead on.
Even with all that, picked up a GT500 for track use last year with CF wheels. I'm now looking for Hunter TC39 machine, as those wheels are 7 grand each.
So I would have no issue with the Chinese tire machine's. I'm not really sold on any of the Chinese balancers, mainly due to the electronics, long term. I guess if you are considering a Chinese balancer, I would take a known good balanced tire with you, put it on the machine and it should balance out first shot with MAYBE it looking for .25 ounce extra on one side. Also, balance a tire on the machine. Take tire off and put it back on in a different spot (machine hub vs wheel hub, rotationally). Should balance out to zero in any position. If both of those things check out, then it is only durability that might be an issue.
I'd love to see you dismount and install even a 45 series tire manually, let alone 35-40 series. Seriously.
