tire balancing question


naford

15+ Year Member

Joined
Sep 30, 2007
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800
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2002
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Heres the story. My brother gets 2 tires for free. They look brand new they still have the nubs on them from when they were cast. So we mount the one go to the tire balance machine put weights on the outside then the inside turn on the machine again and the machine shows zeros which means the tire is balanced. Do the same with the other tire. Put weights on the outside then the inside of the rim. Start the machine again and it says we have to add weight to the outside of the rim opposite of the weight we just added. Ok we add the weight start the machine again and it's zeros so the tire is balanced. Now here is the question. I don't think it's right to add weight across from the original weight? Shouldn't we have subtracted the weight that we just added from the weight across from it? What we did just dosen't pass the common sense test.
 
Last edited:
Hold on just a minute....


You put weights on BEFORE you even spun the tire for the first time? :icon_confused:

But yes, adding weights directly across from eachother seems rather redundant.
 
Are the weights exactly 180* apart? To illustrate, when we only had bubble balancers, since we were unlikely to have the exact single weight needed we would start with two equal weights which were slightly more than what was needed. We moved them apart until the bubble was centered indicating the correct balance. Of course if we had to move them 180* apart we know we had started with too much weight. I think the principle is the same on the electronic balancers.
 
are the weights exactly the same weight? I say take them off and do theprocess again one step at a time, but like said above they may look exactly across from each other, but a couple millimeters makes a difference.
 
Yeah when it calls for weight on the exact opposite side then you subtract what its telling you to add then spin it it again. otherwise you are just counterbalancing and adding more weight.
 
If you have 2 weights 180* apart, they are canceling each other out. You put the first one in the wrong spot, or the machine decided on the second spin that is wanted to change it's answer.

Take both of those weights off, re-balance it and call it good.

You probably just need to scoot the original a few millimeters to one side.
 
counter balance is LAZY

In the industry that is known as COUNTER BALANCING and is lazy and unprofessional but it will work ,up to the point you put too much weight on the wheel - TAKE THE WEIGHTS OFF AND START OVER !!!
 
badmts said:
In the industry that is known as COUNTER BALANCING and is lazy and unprofessional but it will work ,up to the point you put too much weight on the wheel
Click to expand...



Agreed. Especially when I can usually move the original weight and get it spot on without the need to spin the wheel again to get the unweighted balance.


You don't need to completely start over though. The inboard weight is probably ok where it is.:icon_thumby:
 
Well we did take off the weights before we did the first spin. The weights for the first spin was 1.25 and for the second spin it was .5 and they looked 180 from each other. The thing is that we not only tried it twice taking the weights off each time and rebalancing but we tried another balancing machine that was from a different manufacturer. After we had balanced the other tire we tried put the tire in question on and spun it again.

Thanks for the replies it seems that subtracting the weight sounds reasonable.
 
places like walmart counterbalance. it is pointless to do so. Genererally you just need to slide the already applied wieght one way or the other.
 
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