I've always been terribly strict about tires being balanced as accurate as can be done. No poor quality service by a employee having a bad day. No marking up rims either. I bring all this up, right up front. Same goes for over torqueing lug nuts. In watching a vid about wheel balance, I cant quite get how/why the tech "tells the computer where he wants to place the weights, inside the rim, inner and outer". How does he know ahead of time where he wants to place the weights? He swings some mechanical arm to the rims tire face edge then a shorter arm in rear side of rim, inner and outer contact positions, enters those positions into the computer by stepping on a peddal. How does he know where to begin?

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
I've always been terribly strict about tires being balanced as accurate as can be done. No poor quality service by a employee having a bad day. No marking up rims either. I bring all this up, right up front. Same goes for over torqueing lug nuts. In watching a vid about wheel balance, I cant quite get how/why the tech "tells the computer where he wants to place the weights, inside the rim, inner and outer". How does he know ahead of time where he wants to place the weights? He swings some mechanical arm to the rims tire face edge then a shorter arm in rear side of rim, inner and outer contact positions, enters those positions into the computer by stepping on a peddal. How does he know where to begin?

Because if you have nice custom wheels, you don't want an ugly weight stuck on the outside so everyone can see the weight. While it's not as ideal as using both the front and the back for weight if need be, it's a lot more eye pleasing on custom or really nice rims to just put the weight on the back.

A lot of rims do not have a decent lip for clip on weights on the front side. He probably could tell by looking and how the old ones were mounted.

The machine tells where on the wheel to attach the front and rear weights.

Understood. They can even position the stick on weights behind spokes of sorts to be unseen from the face side. However, they seem to guess ahead of knowing, where to position the weights. All weights are inside the rim, some being positioned near rims rear edge, some near front edge. Spin the tire and the computer tells how much weight to add or subtract. How does the guy get the start position for the weights as they are positioned directly across the rims inside from one another.

You can balance a wheel with weight already on it if it’s close. If it’s too far out the tech should remove all the weight, clean it and respin. No one can really do a starting guess.

Our wheel balancer at work allows us to do this. What happens is you use the arm that tells the machine where along the width of the wheel you will be placing the wheel weights. For the "outside" placement, you place the arm at the width point you will be placing the weight, then you rotate the wheel until you are behind a spoke and enter that point, and then move to the next spoke and enter that point. Now the computerized balancer has all the information it needs to calculate where and how much weight is needed in order to hide the weights behind the spokes in order to balance the wheel.

It doesn't matter where you initially begin your measurements along the circumference of the wheel, but you usually begin by measuring the width of the rim, measure the placement for the inside weight and then placement of the "outside" weight. After that the machine calculates everything when it spins up the wheel.

For the best balancing available to shops right now there is what is called "Road Force Balancing". For information on that, look at https://www.hunter.com/wheel-b...ers/road-force-elite for more info

OK, thats what I was looking for. Thats just like the video. Thank you for that.

Black Pepper, I believr that Hunter machine was used in the video and I forgot about the laser...duh. Road force makes good sense to me. Thank you.

I've had custom wheels on my last couple vehicles and have alway required the tech's to do balancing as follows...

1 - Mount the tires on the wheels and spin them up to determine how in/out of balance they are.
2 - If the wheel/tire is out of balance very much, they need to re-mount the tire on the wheel and re-spin until the out of balance condition is fully minimized.
3 - Then spin balance and place weights.

That process results in a very good balance with a bare minimum amount of weight applied. Way too often I've seen the tire store guys simply pile up a huge amount of weight on the back side of a rim to offset an out of balance situation that 'could' mostly be offset by simply rotating the tire on the rim first.

My last set of Michelin tires were perfect which I have never seen before.
One of my Western wheels is not true so that wheel/tire always needs weights.
The first set of Michelins needed weights but they were very small like an ounce or less.

I prefer this:

http://www.innovativebalancing.com/

quote:

Originally posted by Yellow Jacket:
I prefer this:

http://www.innovativebalancing.com/

Those look pretty interesting. I may have to try them out.

Back in the day, the tire manufacturer would paint a spot on the tire where it would weigh more. This spot was used to align the balance of the tire to the wheel by way of the valve stem location.

It would reduce the need for heavier weights and a few rare occasions, allow for no weights at all.

^^^ Pretty sure they all still do. I know for a fact that Bridgestone, Continental, Dunlop and Pirelli do this today. I seriously doubt that any major manufacturers have discontinued that practice.

Just to add - I buy all of my tires from TireRack and have my local guy do the mount & balance w/ a Hunter 'RoadForce' Balancer. When I pickup my wheels/tires, they are marked as to which corner of the vehicle they should be mounted. On the first set of Bridgestones for my Volvo S60, he reindexed/mounted two of the tires (one of them twice actually!) in order to get the right balance for the set. I found him on the Hunter website where you can search for an installer w/ a Hunter 'RoadForce' machine using their 'Locate a Balancer' search function. I actually found my local Volvo dealer on the list as well, and have used him as a back-up if my preferred guy's shop is too busy and I can't wait.

I really like Cooper CS5 Grand Touring tires. Last set I had left near identical tread pattern to my Michelin X tires in the snow. The CS5s are a great looking tire, 80,000 mile life and Ive never worn a pair of tires out, they handle good in all conditions and ride quiet. Heck of it is, some places get more now for the CS5s than the Michelin X. I too will buy them and have the mount and balance done at a different shop. I feel much better being right there when they mount and balance. A lot of big tire places wont let the Customer any where near their garage floor. I will check out tirerack nh..thank you.

quote:

Originally posted by 41:
My last set of Michelin tires were perfect which I have never seen before.
One of my Western wheels is not true so that wheel/tire always needs weights.
The first set of Michelins needed weights but they were very small like an ounce or less.

The ones on my last Expedition 2008, LTX MS2's were also near perfect and only needed a tiny amount of weight to balance them