The art of tire balancing?

[SCadaddle]

Originally Posted by RKDinOKC

My tire tech uses a Hunter Road Force balancer.

He does this...
Spin all the rims empty. The balancer tracks each one and he gives the balancer a reference position for the wheel, usually the valve stem so he can place it back on the balancer and the balancer knows it's orientation. Then mounts the tires on the rims, puts the wheels on the balancer with the rim in it's referenced position in relation to the balancer. Then spins em up. It tracks each tire and you mark a reference position on each tire as well. After all four have been spun the balancer recommends which tire to mount on which wheel and how the positions should be located to each other. After remounting the tires to the correct wheels and in the right position, you spin them all again adding the weights where needed as necessary. This way it best matches the rim to the tire to use the least weight to get the best balance.

As a true road force balancer it takes into consideration the weight of the car and the max speed you are expecting to drive the car and it will make sure they are balanced for that speed as well. It also checks for roundness and trueness of the wheels and tires and will reject any rim or tire that is too far off or takes too much weight to balance or can't be shaved round for the speeds desired.

Most all the work is done by the balancer. But the operator does have to pay attention and be willing to swap the tires around to different rims after having already mounting them once.

Only had one set he mounted that I ever had any problems with. I had replaced the plastic valve stem caps with some aluminum ones that had logos on them. It caused a slight vibration from 80mph to 85mph. Had to rebalance the wheels with the fancy valve stem caps on them to get rid of the vibration.

That sounds like a well thought out procedure. Unfortunately, the only way that would happen for me is if I was the proud owner of a Hunter Road Force Balancer! I think I would be fortunate to have any shop spin them up as is to see if they are anywhere close to being balanced before first just removing the weights and starting over. That being said, I think if I can find the red dots still on the tires I'll have them break them down and put the dots at the valve stems then spin them up. Plan B would be to just admit I'm throwing good money away on bad tires and just get a new set of tires.

[DanielDudley]

I had a guy put a strip of 7 weights on one section of a wheel, and four on another.

I took it right down the road to the next shop, and it was miraculously fixed with one weight in one spot.

If I didn't want to buy new tires this week, I'd probably re balance and rotate it to the back.

[RKDinOKC]

There are four shops that I know of that will do it right. Two are tire shops, one is a general auto repair shop, the other is independent Porsche service.

Have had one tire shop that was recommended by another independent Porsche service that put so much air pressure in the tires the car wobbled around like all the wheels were loose and about to fall off, it was almost uncontrollable. Why would anyone ever put 60psi in car tires? Bled them down to the correct pressures and it drove fine, thankfully.

[onevoice]

Very sore subject for me.

The techs are idiots.

Last week I took my daily driver truck to SAMs to get tires. Normal tires, normal wheels, Chevy 1/2 ton truck, they must have done thousands of them. The "tech" hit another car in the lot with my truck when pulling it into the service bay.

$4000 damage.

I was also having the tires being taken off put back on some other wheels for my 1 ton farm truck. When he got them mounted, he came in and told me the wheels were bent and they took way to much weight. I was ready to just get the hell out of there, so I took them home and put them on my bubble balancer. They all had 10-15oz of weights

They all balanced easily with about 3 oz total. And they run vibration free. I measured the runout and they were all pretty good for 1 ton steel wheels. I think the lazy asses clamped the wheels on the machine off center because they are so heavy.

I'll never let those idiots handle my vehicles again. Problem is I'm not sure ANY of them are competent.

[David]

That Hunter Road Force balancer sounds like the way to go.

I've started going to Rollo Solutions Wheel Repair in Houston. They seem a little gangster but a lot of nice cars go through there and they mount and remount the tire a time or two until it requires minimal weight. (or maybe they have a Hunter and I didn't realize it)

Unfortunately I got to test their wheel repair service on my Cayenne and they're good at that too.

I started going to them when I got some wheels painted. After we worked out the color and price, I asked when would be a good time to drop off the wheels. They said right now so I asked how I would get home. They said we'll give you another set of Porsche wheels and tires to borrow until the job's done. Nice service.

[mepstein]

Originally Posted by Mark Henry

My wifes snow tires I mounted them with no weights. 4 oz of airsoft pellets in each tire.
Works perfectly but the rub is it doesn't work well in wide tires.

My buddy had tires that they just couldn't get a slight shimmy out of, so since they were balanced we tossed 2 oz of pellets into it, fixed it right up.

In order to use the airsoft pellets you have to break the bead to get them in, there is a commercial version that you install through the valve stem.

Mark - I do this on my wheels up to 225 width. Works great. My neighbors ride motorcycles and say this is pretty common for bikes.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by David

That Hunter Road Force balancer sounds like the way to go.

I've started going to Rollo Solutions Wheel Repair in Houston. They seem a little gangster but a lot of nice cars go through there and they mount and remount the tire a time or two until it requires minimal weight. (or maybe they have a Hunter and I didn't realize it)

Unfortunately I got to test their wheel repair service on my Cayenne and they're good at that too.

I started going to them when I got some wheels painted. After we worked out the color and price, I asked when would be a good time to drop off the wheels. They said right now so I asked how I would get home. They said we'll give you another set of Porsche wheels and tires to borrow until the job's done. Nice service.

wow, impressive! Making a note...