Quote: Clippie wrote in post #1

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Has anybody else experienced this as a solution to what appears to be a persistent problem with our much loved vans?

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I'm not sure that balancing previously unbalanced wheels is going to be the solution to things working loose, but it's certainly going to help.

My own experience of balancing caravan wheels is that tyre fitters won't necessarily balance them as a matter of course in the way they do car wheels, though I reckon they should.

The thing is that an unbalanced caravan wheel will vibrate in exactly the same way that an unbalanced car wheel will; it's just that you can't feel it.

And it's perfectly reasonable to expect vibration to be a contributing factor in stuff working loose and falling on the floor.

The other thing that doesn't help - and it's one you can't really do much about - is that caravan suspension is pretty rudimentary and certainly nowhere near as compliant as car suspension is. The obvious result of this is that the ride is pants and the shock of every bump and pothole is transmitted into the body relatively unmolested. Having tyres blown up too hard also doesn't help as the sidewalls of over-inflated tyres won't flex as much as they should, and I'm pretty sure that the natural flexing of the tyre is a significant component in the caravan's suspension.

There won't be a specific amount of weight required to balance the wheels. If it turns out that it needs 170g each side, you could take some small comfort from the fact that they need the same weight. At least there's some consistency in the manufacture of the tyres (and wheels) if nothing else.

I reckon it makes a ton of sense to have the wheels balanced. If they aren't balanced now - and I appreciate that it's a faff - I'd get it done irrespective of how much life was left in the tyres and I'd certainly make sure that new ones were balanced when they were put on. The cost implications are negligible.

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