Brakes Wheels 1st Gen Tires Most liked posts in thread: DIY tire balancing.

Have any of you ever heard of or used tire beads?

I'll find the link, but this guy seems on the level and seems to really believe these work.......

 

This is the tool we were discussing. Its a bubble balance.

 

You can't go wrong with a bubble balance!

Buy a variety of wheel weights and you are good to go.

 

Not to rain on the DIY parade, but Discount Tire rotates and balances tires for free if you buy from them. I think it's about $50 for life-of-the-tire service if you bought elsewhere.

 

The balancer has adjusters at the bottom to first center your bubble.
The biggest concern will be in the location of your weights.

A bubble balance is static or manually achieved and a Dynamic is on a wheel machine that spins the assembly and finds the location and size for weight placement. With practice and comparing a bubble(static) to a machine (Dynamic) you should with a little practice achieve the same zero balanced results.
I have been doing my own bubble balance for year only because I do not also trust that the tire technician takes the extra moment to re calibrate the Dynamic Wheel Balancer for my job.ut:

I know that you will be able to accurately balance your own wheel with bubble balancer.

 

Sometimes old tech is the best tech............I used to use one of these every day back in the mid-late 60's.

However, if they didn't run smoothly we'd get out the powered balancer - it spun the tire up to 100mph or more and would find the balance point down to a tiny fraction of an ounce. It was pretty cool cause sometimes it would be smooth at some speeds and vibrate like crazy at others. It was especially good for wire wheels on Jags and such....

 

Sorry guys

I don't think the bubble will do a good job on a wheel. You may get close, but it's only sensitive to radial weight distribution, not distribution along the axis of rotation. If you do things like a hunter road force system, not only will you get the radial weight distribution, and the axial distribution, but you'll also detect tire out of round and hard spots where they don't flex well (more common on cheaper tires where belts overlap). Also, a good shop with good tools can match the radia wheel offest with the radia tire offset (after all, nothing is perfect) to really minimize overall tire/wheel radial offset. the shop I use that can do this only really reccomends this for cars that see real high speed use though...

But in the price vs performance, I don't know which is the best way to go. And really, you can always use the bubble and if you can't get rid of all vibration pay up for a road force job...

Matt

 

I've never had to rebalance anywhere near that frequency on any car I've owned. My last set (Michelin Exalto PE2) went their entire life without needing ANY rebalance after the initial mounting. Could you have some condition (suspension or alignment) that contributes to the issue?

 

Wow... here's how it works for me:

1) buy new tires
2) have them mounted and balanced
3) drive the snot out of them until they're bald
4) repeat

I've had no need to rebalance since I've had the MINI, 73,000 miles, 5 sets of tires.

Of course, for me, tires are soft of like disposable contact lenses. Just heavier.

 

It really is impossible to go thousands of miles on a tire and not effect balance.

Hitting curbs, potholes, or other road hazards, normal tire wear may create an unbalance in the tire, along with alignment, racing, tire pressure, other rotation assembly wear like rotors etc etc.......:lol:

Someone participating on this thread should actually try a bubble balance and then have it compared to a properly calibrated other balance devices. Post the results.:idea:

Having often done this I well know the result.opcorn:

 

Try:
wheel weights items - Get great deals on eBay Motors, Business Industrial items on eBay.com!

Also the Tire rack and other similar places will sell them to you.

 

Just a thought, not knowing what weights you will need, you could end up with a large inventory of weights and not have the one you do need.

Jim

 

Don't tire weights have a clip and you put them on with a combination puller/ hammer?

Jim

 

Back in the stone age. Most now are stuck on with a VHB(Very High Bond) adhesive.

Mark