Tom,
I have mounted and balanced perhaps 5,000 tires in
my lifetime (I put myself through school working in a
tire/auto repair shop), and I can tell you that it was
not uncommon for Michelins on nice, unabused factory
alloy wheels, to require no or very little weights
(like half ounce or less), whereas just about every
other tire make/model required some amount of weight.
However, most good name brand tires on decent wheels
really shouldnt need any more than an ounce split
between the inside and outside. It was also not
uncommon, especially on larger truck wheels, for a
tire/wheel combo to require over 3 ounces of weight.
In that case, I would always deflate the tire, break
the bead and turn the tire 180 degrees relative to the
wheel in an effort to get a better initial balance so
the whole assembly would require less weight. Many
times this would help significantly, suggesting that
the wheel was not perfectly balanced in the first
place.
There is a lot more to balancing tires than you
might think. I worked at a busy shop, and the
balancer took a hell of a lot of abuse, however, it
was extremely repeatable. The guy came by to
calibrate it every 3 or 4 months, and a reasonable
conscientious operator could get very repeatable
results, or at least I could.
$12/tire is getting kind of expensive. Valve stems
at $2.50 is also getting pricey, but I can tell you
from personal experience that they can and do leak.
In addition, I can tell you from experience that they
will also break suddenly. I had a set of tires
installed at Sam's once, and they were out of new
valve stems. I said fine. Within a couple of weeks I
had failures in two of them, each time while cruising
on the freeway at 70mph+. That was before I got the
job in the shop. While I could do it for free, I
would balance and rotate my Michelin X-ones every 3-5k
miles. They were on good factory alloys, and they
were always smooth. They lasted, no lie, 110k miles
on my lightweight VW.
It doesnt matter to me what you do with your tires,
but most shops now will do the "lifetime" balance for
$9-12/tire. Then you can go back and get them
rebalanced and rotated at 3-5k mile intervals. I
sincerely believe, having seen strange wear patterns
from unbalanced tire/wheel assemblies, that balancing
tires increases wear. How much, well that may be
debatable. But making sure that tire/wheel assemblies
are balanced will also increase bearing and suspension
life as well. Anyway, If I'm going to spend $80-100
per tire for Michelins, and extra $40 to keep them
computerized balanced for the life of them seems
fairly reasonable, especially when you consider that,
again, many tire shops will MOUNT and balance for
$10/tire with lifetime balance, which also includes
new valve stems.
Even now, I am unable to go to a shop an balance my
tires myself, but I do have the tools to mount my own
tires. I, therefore, mount my own tires and then go
and have them balanced.
Just my thoughts.
Regards,
Ben Pender
some Audis
some VWs
some MGs
--- "tewoods@mindspring.com" <tewoods@mindspring.com>
wrote:
> Hi Ben;
>
> You don't know until you drive the car at various
> speeds but 70 out of 70
> is pretty good odds, would you not say? I just
> think balancing on dynamic
> balancers is a scam at $12/tire..... Tom
>
>
>
>
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: Ben Pender ben_pender@yahoo.com
> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:32:07 -0700 (PDT)
> To: tewoods@mindspring.com
> Subject: RE: [Peugeot-L] Digest Number 1849
>
>
> Tom,
>
> But how do you know that the wheel is perfectly
> balanced?
>
> Regards,
> Ben Pender
> --- "tewoods@mindspring.com"
> <tewoods@mindspring.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi everybody;
> >
> > Re: tires (tyres for you folks who have a boot and
> a
> > bonnet...);
> >
> > I have chosen not to balance any of the tires I
> have
> > bought for the last 20
> > years or so for myself and girl-friend and brother
> > and mother, etc. etc. -
> > about 70 tires in all. All have been top-end
> > Michelins H rated or better.
> >
> > Not a single one has ever run rough at any speed.
> I
> > started doing this
> > when balancing started costing in the $7 range and
> > above. I just do not
> > think it is necessary or worth it for top quality
> > tires. (also refuse to
> > replace stems EVERY time for $2.50 a piece - I
> > inspect them before having
> > tires mounted and decide for myself if they should
> > be replaced - never had
> > a failure) Maybe 40 or 50 years ago when tire
> > production technology was
> > not nearly what it is today one could make a case
> > for the necessity of
> > balancing. But, I trust the top manufacturers to
> > make a round and balanced
> > tire more than I trust the folks in your local
> tire
> > shop to calibrate and
> > operate the balancing machine and install the
> > weights properly. In fact,
> > the last time I had tires balanced, two ran rough
> as
> > can be - I pulled the
> > weights off and all was fine. Anybody else had
> the
> > same experience? Mi
> > dos pesos, Tom Woods
> >
> >
>
> > mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> > http://mail2web.com/ .
> >
> >
> >
>
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Received on Thu Apr 21 11:35:05 2005
