Acceptable tire balancing job?

[Zero102]

I had a set of wheels I brought in to have new tires installed on. They had hammer-on weights on them when I brought them in. I asked for them to be balanced using sticky weights. They removed all of the old weights except one on this wheel:


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Also, 2 of the wheels are balanced like this:

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One of those weights is at the outside of the wheel, one at the inside, but it seems odd that 2 would be off in what looks like such an unusual manner. It almost looked like maybe they weren't putting them on the balancing machine properly. The previous weights were only one or two small weights per wheel, all on the outside face of the wheel with the sole exception of the first picture above.

The tires are Bridgestone RE-71Rs if that matters and the wheels are 15x7 Rotas.

Is this okay? Should I be going back and asking for them to be rebalanced?

[tirebob]

Is it a beautiful job? No... Is it actually balanced? Quite possibly. Balance is just evening out heavy spots and even though there are weights all over the place, it might be actually balanced. If it doesn't shake while driving it is balanced.

That said, if a customer brought it to my shop and one of our people did that job, I would absolutely redo it and would he having a chat with the employee who let it leave like that because it is definitely lazy work!

[Zero102]

I had one wheel come back from Spec-R like that on my focus earlier this year, then now this set of new wheels I bought and had the tires installed at Costco and I was starting to think I was crazy and that somehow this was correct.

Thanks for chiming in!

I haven't actually installed them on the car because once I do I'll probably be too lazy to take them back off and have them rebalanced so they might be balanced perfectly fine and I just don't know yet.

[tirebob]

See, in the pic of the first wheel, the two weights directly opposite of each other (the clip weight on top and the tape weight directly below it 180 degrees) virtually cancel each other out (assuming the weights are the same amount), so they both could be removed completely and the net effect is the same. Again.. It could be balanced, but it is sloppy looking for the client and wasteful of wheel weights for the shop...

[HiSpec]

Any reason why one shop prefers to use clip-on weight over the stick on ones?

I see pros and cons between the two methods.

[Zero102]

I know stick-on weights are prohibited at some track events but they do look nicer. Since autoslalom does not have any rules about sticky weights I asked for them over the clip-on weights for aesthetic reasons.

Bob - Thanks again for the information. Is it normal to have sticky weights added on opposite sides of the wheel but some on the inside and some on the outside? Does that indicate a setup problem or does it just work out that the tire is weighted funny sometimes?

[tirebob]

Originally posted by Zero102
I know stick-on weights are prohibited at some track events but they do look nicer. Since autoslalom does not have any rules about sticky weights I asked for them over the clip-on weights for aesthetic reasons.

Bob - Thanks again for the information. Is it normal to have sticky weights added on opposite sides of the wheel but some on the inside and some on the outside? Does that indicate a setup problem or does it just work out that the tire is weighted funny sometimes?

Weights are almost always needed on both the inside and outside edges of rims, but with tape weights the end up behind the spoke face. Sometimes it only is required on a single spot and sometimes none at all. The key is there should not be weights in two separate areas on the same edge. In other words, the wheel in the second pic is normal... The first pic is not.

As for weight styles, ie clip or tape, it depends on wheel styles. Most customer aftermarket wheels, and many factory mag wheels, the wheel lips are smooth and have no lip edge to accept a wheel clip style weight, and cosmetically a tape weight is typically hidden so it looks nicer, but in theory the ideal way to balance a wheel is to have the weights on the outermost point of the rim as this uses the least amount of weight to achieve balance. I wouldn't want a clip weight banged onto a nice rim though because it is ugly and the clip itself can mark the edge up a bit. On steel wheels or crappy beat up factory wheels that can use clip weights, it is good though.

Our shop rule of thumb is to always use tape weights on new aftermarket wheels and almost all used aftermarket wheels, and for OEM wheels we use the same method the car company used unless otherwise requested by the customer...

[Zero102]

Bob - Thanks so much for your advice! You guys are always so helpful and that's why I have bought 3 sets of tires from you in the past. I would have come back for these ones but Costco's price was freakin' unbelievable and I have already blown this year's budget by nearly $800. $552 tax-in for 4x Bridgestone RE-71Rs in 205/50R15 mounted and balanced.

It sounds like going back to Costco would get the extra weights taken off but would mostly be a waste of time for what is at best a cosmetic issue.

These wheels/tires are for autoslalom and although I'd like to pretend that the extra weight is going to slow me down I just don't think the 30g or whatever is unnecessarily on the wheel will be a problem I will use it as my excuse when people beat me though.

[Zero102]

Sorry to ask for more help but I was installing these wheels today and ran into something I wanted to check.

Are these lug nuts safe to use? (keep in mind this is for a set of RE-71Rs on a ford focus used for autoslalom)


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They are steel nuts which I got a few years back from Tire Rack with a different set of wheels I bought. I tried them because the lug nuts that were on my car had a lot of grooves and pitting on the seat area and the new wheels were nice and smooth so I didn't want to use the old lug nuts. These new lug nuts are M12 and are about 20mm long, so since the stud is basically flush (within 1mm) of the end of the lug nut I'd say they are engaged on 18-19mm of thread. I recall there being a rule that you need 1.5x the fastener diameter for full holding torque, so M12 with 18mm of engagement should be okay? The old lug nuts only had about 20mm of thread in them and past that they were drilled out to a larger size so I don't think these have any less thread engagement but they looked odd and I wanted to check before I go abuse them on the 24th up in Red Deer.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Well, those nuts have engaged the maximum available amount of stud that's available to them - different lug nuts wouldn't give you any more engagement than you already have. If you have concerns about total thread engagement and having extra threads available, you'll need longer wheel studs.

Personally, the eyeball test says you have sufficient threads engaged and I would have no concerns about running those, but you may want to run those pics by whoever is teching you as it will ultimately be their call.

[tirebob]

Hard to say 100% from pics but it looks like the should be fine. There is more than enough thread engagement. As long as the nut and wheel seats are properly mated together it looks good.

[Zero102]

Thanks for the replies! It sounds like I'm good to go. So far I have only driven it around the block a few times to make sure I didn't have any clearance problems, I just wanted to confirm before I took it out on any real roads.

Bob - the seat shape on the wheel and lug nuts are the same, both tapered and not rounded and they are of equal size. Is that what you meant?
I think what was bugging me about is that the lug nuts are so short. I've never seen any like that before. There is maybe 8-9mm of hex shape to the lug nut. I dunno, I guess I was afraid maybe they could split down the side or something?... Or that they would be able to stretch open and slip off the threads?... I guess that doesn't really make sense.

As for tech inspection, it's a CSCC autoslalom event in Red Deer, and we self-tech. Plus, I'm running the event so it would look really bad if I had a wheel failure

[tirebob]

Just so long as the seats are both the same and that they fully seat together without interence, which sounds like it does. There is zero issue with how short that nut is. You are getting full engagement of the threads as it is...

[dubhead]

Originally posted by HiSpec
Any reason why one shop prefers to use clip-on weight over the stick on ones?

I see pros and cons between the two methods.

Well I see one pro to the general public of stick on in that they would seem quite a bit less likely to stick in someones tire should they fall off, as I had a clip-on destroy a tire once.