What are these on this vintage Bentley?

[Noah930]

What are the 4 little yellowish doohickeys on the inside of the wheel rim on the Bentley? Wheel weights?

[Tea Tray]

They look like rim locks.
Basically a clamp that wedges the rim and tire together. Under low tire pressure, the clamps prevent the rim from turning inside the tire - and shearing the valve stem off the tube.
Very common on dirt bikes.

[Dixie]

They're wheel weights. Took a bit to find the answer.

[Steve Carlton]

What's the point of having a lot of weight every 90 degrees? They cancel each other out.

[A930Rocket]

Maybe giving the wheel a little more mass, in addition to balance? Just pulling this out of my butt….

[sc_rufctr]

Nothing to ad but I've never seen these before.

[Dixie]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlton

What's the point of having a lot of weight every 90 degrees? They cancel each other out.

I thought this a pretty good question, so I researched it. In the picture I posted, the weight is only the dull lead washers under the shiny retaining washer. The rest of the stack is fiber spacers. The wheel is balanced by varying where the lead washers are in the stack.

I also found this type of wheel balancing was exclusive to a few high end performance cars. Wheel balance for a typical car was done by wrapping lead wire around a spoke or two, if done at all.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlton

What's the point of having a lot of weight every 90 degrees? They cancel each other out.

From the looks of it, it's just a show car. So they're probably there just for show.
Having said that, they are mounted from the inside of the bare wheel before the tire is on, so no way to know exactly where the best location is. They don't have much choice but to put them on at 90 degrees. Afterward, they stack weights on the individual units as needed (as described by Dixie) to get some degree of balance.

[Steve Carlton]