VEHICLES, CAMPERS, and BOATS > Tires, Wheels, and Suspension

Some tire balancing tips if your OCD

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OldKooT:
So, has anyone here spent much time balancing tires on these new balancers most all shops have been using for the last 5 years or so? If so then you probably know this, but for those that don't....

Those machines need to be "calibrated" frequently and most often they are not at all in "spec" Let me share a semi long but very recent story (happened today) in fact.

My wife's new car she dubbed her Grandma Beater needed rubber..P205/75/R15 is the size it requires. Now normally I may have upped size a bit and gone for some P215/70/15 to gain a bit of width..but she has a running wager she can get this car to 25mpg so....well we kept the tires thin. Anyway although a great story, I will save it for some other thread and get to the tire balance issue.

They mounted the 4 special hard to buy (why I dunno) Hancock whitwalls and balanced them. I had asked them not to balance them but, they didn't listen. So they balance all 4 and then I asked them to balance all 4 again on a different machine. Guess what? All 4 needed weight in different places/amounts. Reason?....the machines were not at all calibrated. So they toss them on the car and I go for a drive... it has a slight shimmy at 105mph. So back we go....(mind you it was smooth as silk on the 16 year old tires we drove it up there on) I have them remove all the weights, and we drove it 85mph home nice and smooth. I also got my $$ back for balancing...

Now I marked each tire with weight and location before we left, when we got home I went to my local tire guys and had them balance the tires. The hot cold cycles had them well seated to the rim now and they took almost no weight at all. And in completely different places. Now it's smooth to 105mph and should be fine.

I have long ago learned never balance tires until you have driven them enough to get them warm...also I always air them down to say half of air capacity and drive them around town a little then air them up and get them warm again at speed. THEN I have them balanced while warm as possible...and well this works. It's much added headaches, and the tire guys will despise you, but it works. I also usually (didn't with these smaller car tires) spin the rims on the balancer sans tires and mark them for weight... then move the tire around on the rim to counter balance...something any good tire shop should do...most do not.

The above "tricks" which are actually just old school tire balancing trade craft will in many cases fix that "wobbler" that after a few thousand miles has bounced it's way to a permanent out of balance issue no matter what you do.

TexasRedNeck:
Is it still true that tires have a dot that shows the heavy spot?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

KensAuto:
I think that stands for department of transportation Tex. :P

OldKooT:
LoL I despise my phone....

I haven't noticed many marks on tires of late honestly. Then again I have also not mounted many personally recently. The Hancoks we just bought today had no visible marks.

Flyin6:
Man, you people are detail oriented!

Made me think of my Chinook. Know how it has a dual wheel up front and a single wheel on the back? Well those wheels, either 12" or 14 ", well not sure but 14 ply with 88psi. I had a front one way out of balance once.

I had landed in a river bed in Korea...A river bed made up with these football sized stones. Know where I'm going with this? So we take off and set the brakes and the chief who clears us for flight is doing the hanging out of the aircraft thing and he says, "Sir, we have a big stone wedged in the right front wheel.

Hmmm, never had that happen again. I thought of doing some maneuver over some village and dropping the stone, but quickly thought better of the idea. Ah, as soon as I land, we'll roll forward a couple feet and it will get knocked out. Then the rock will be laying on the taxiway where some airplane driver will get all ticked off once again at these big offensive Armee helicopters messing up HIS pretty airfield...he will get angry and the thought of that happening is very satisfying to me.

Well, we land to the taxiway and start to roll forward and right away, I get this nice crunch sound followed by the aircraft trying to do a turn about the front tire. (Read: Uncontrollable in four wheel taxi mode). Well, not to be stopped by a rock stuck in the tires, I locked the aft swivels, turned on the AFCS, go 2" aft on the cyclic and bring in the power. Well, she stands up pretty as a princess on the aft gear and by lowering the power a tad the nose comes down just a bit and we start going forward, with the aft wheels on the ground. This is an acceptable method of taxiing. Well acceptable is a relative statement. It is acceptable where the huge rotor wash caused by a half hovering Chinook isn't happening next to, say an area where construction is taking place. Near a place with silt containment dams, stacks of plywood and sheet rock, piles of boxes of light fixture's and bits of all sorts of things. No, it is not good to two wheel taxi next to those things.

Oh, small Korean guards on their 2.5 ton bicycles...? No those are not wind resistant either. That poor guard came pedaling down the side of the taxiway toward us and being a Korean, he has had little to no experience riding bicycles in typhoons. That guard ran into the wall of wind and was immediately swept over the embankment and into a six foot deep ditch full of sewer and nasty stuff.

In hindsight it would have been better to just land to the sod somewhere and let the chief get out and pry the rock out, but that's hindsight...

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