Wheel Weights

Im pretty sure some superbike & superstock riders in MA were feeling the wheels spinning inside the tire for braking & acceleration. Ive personally felt rears do it on hyperbore street missles... pushing a front to spin is on the bucket list.

 

It's impossible to address a topic with a 'fix all' solution and think it's applicable to all scenarios.

A podium'ing expert will have more preferences than a Novice group track day rider. Just because the track day rider can't feel the difference between 2 turns of preload or 4 doesn't mean it's not making a difference.

Different brand tires require different amount of weights. I have burned up plenty of Dunlop's and Pirelli's, mounting/balancing my own tires. And without a doubt, Dunlop will, on average, require more weights to balance.

I'm not saying they always need a ton of weights, sometimes they didn't, or a 0.25 ounce at most. But on average, they required more weights. On average, most of my Pirelli's require less than half an ounce. My take away from this is close to your thoughts actually. I balance my front tires, and only balance the bare rear rim, and don't bother with balancing the rears any more. So if we're talking Pirelli's, I'd agree with you...you can probably get away without balancing them most of the time. Dunlops? No fucking way.

 

While that will tell you if you are looking at the tire CC or CCW (usually), I don't think it means what you thing it means.

 

Pretty sure it was to know which way the rotation was

 

funny- i just had a set of Michelins mounted on my Mercedes GL at Discount Tire. I've had quite a few sets mounted at this shop the past few years and never any issues. After about a month I took the car back in to have them rebalance them as I was getting a distinct vibration around 75-78mph. still have the vibration after the rebalancing, (he did say they had to add some weight) but it is a bit better. Just bought my daughter a mazda CX-5 and after driving it for the past few weeks and then getting in the GL again, the balance is driving me nuts. I guess I"ll take it over again and see if they can do a better job.

My usual mechanic said he can balance them but would cost $100 or so. He said it it's still there he wouldn't charge me anything but he said to take it back to them again and see what they can do before I bug him, he's busy.

 

Off topic but I bought forged Al rims for my vette and 2 grand worth of Michelins. The Chevy dealer mounted them and put these disgusting silver weights on my brand new pristine gloss black rims!!!!! WTF, I mean right?

 

Makes total sense. A heavier combination of wheel and tire will probably require more weight to balance and be more noticeable to the operator if out of balance. I also have an old GL, I put 275/55/20 tires on it that I mounted myself in a buddies garage (where I always mount my bike race tires ironically enough). Within 5min of driving on the highway headed home, I could feel a vibration in the seat of my pants and knew at least the rears were out of balance enough for me to feel. Had them all balanced at a tire shop, vibration immediately gone. But my motorcycle wheels/tires? Never felt an issue, and until I do, I won't bother balancing them.

 

Closing the loop on this, I remounted and balanced the rear.

When checked, it was needing 1.5 ounces to balance it. Took tire off and checked bare rim, and the rim needed 0.5 ounces to balance it (kinda annoying - I wonder if there's a lightweight valve stem I can buy to swap out for next time). Rotated tire 180 degrees, and now it's perfectly balanced (said another way, wheel/tire combo is balanced with just the 0.5 ounces that the bare wheel needed).

I'm not sure what to make of this - I didn't do anything different on the rear than last time, and there was none of the bead issues that I had when I first mounted the front. So I think some amount of the 1.5 - 0.5 = 1.0 ounce difference is imbalance within the tire, but I guess time will tell when I mount the next rear.

 

Just a note. The bead not being seated all the way, while it's not the way you should ride it, doesn't effect the balance. You balance it by offsetting mass, not offsetting safety. It not being seated, doesn't change how much it weights.

 

It does change the profile of the tire and where the mass is relative to center, thereby changing balance. The WHOLE tire is off center on the rim.

 

I haven't seen a tire that was a little off on the bead, that changed it enough to change the weights. It's still, weights offsetting weight.

On a teeter totter (that's what it is) you really have to move a kid to make a difference. One kid leaning forward doesn't change the balance much. But that kid sliding up a couple of feet, would. The wheel isn't that big.

 

Me and this thread now

 

I worked at an auto tire shop for a few years. On a dynamic balancer, an unseated bead always changed the balance and wheel-weight requirement. The unseated bead causes a hop that the balancer can detect.

But it rly doesn’t seem like this could affect a static balance all that much. Yes, the tire is in a slightly different spot. But that should be very very minor, maybe a 0.25oz change or less.

The new result says the tire is perfectly balanced all by itself. This is a change from prev balancing attempts. To me, that suggests there’s something wrong with the balancer, machine or human. Are the cones actually using the bearings or are they touching the seals?

Wait a min. Looking at the pics, are those spacers in the wheel when balancing? Unless you have long stepped cones that get to the bearings, that’s incorrect.

 

I can see it effecting a spin balancer. We don't use those.

 

And that’s why I stayed out of that gennie thread for so long.

 

Did they road force balance them? If so, and the numbers came back out of whack, Michelin will buy those tires back off of you for whatever remaining tread depth is left. I had a similar issue on one tire and Michelin bought all four back and I was able to get a new set with only putting up about $250 or so. Discount Tire was the one who helped me with that, even though I bought the tires somewhere else.

 

The tire industry doesn't buy the tires back it's called a warranty adjustment based on remaining tread depth. And ANY tire shop/car dealer/repair place can do a warranty inspection and contact the tire company and request a credit. They'll even call tag the tires to the inspection center then issue said credit to the shop.

 

And since many here have commented on tires not being properly beaded on the rim nobody has mentioned the possibility of the tire coming off the rim in use. Our standard rr procedure is always to check the bead seating area as it's getting ready to be balanced. If it's not on completely it gets dismounted and corrected. The main causes of this are improper fitting once in a while. BUT usually a really dirty nasty bead area of the rim causes it. FYI it's your responsibility to make sure the rim is clean and the bearings have no roughness.

Now force variation testing notes. A improperly beaded tire will most times appear as a tire out of spec and this is not correct of course. Sometimes rookies make this mistake.
There's two ways to fix it. Break the bead and relube then remount. Or simply bounce the tire wheel assembly on the ground 5 or 6 times and then recheck it. 9 times out of 10 that does it.
Now back to banging my head against the wall and working on the garage project.

 

Discount tire was the one who used the term "buy back", but what you said is exactly what they did. However you want to word it, I got good customer service and a good final result.