Wheel balance - share your thoughts pour favor

[billard81]

Here is what I am dealing with in my aftermarket wheel life:

Bought a set of 22" KMC Slides with Lexani LX-Nine rubber in 305/40/22.

They showed up ready to mount onto the vehicle... already balanced, etc.

Balance job didn't seem the greatest... felt to me like what was a wobble in the rear-end, wasn't extreme though. On the highway it would get a pretty serious shake in the steering wheel.

Took it to a local tireshop (small town) that is part of a fairly large franchise/chain. They told me one of the wheels was very "heavy" apparently and had a lot of lead wheel weights on it. To my surprise/disappointment they took all of the existing weights off and put in this "counteractbalance" bead balance media. No attempt was even made to spin balance.

Drove about 400 miles, wasn't 100% satisfied with these beads. Took some time to "balance out" at highway speeds, needed to re-disperse after every stop and didn't seem to disperse until speed reached over 30mph... stop and go traffic is not ideal for this method of balancing obviously.

Took it back to the tire shop and told them the deal. Removed the beads, and spin-balanced them as I wanted. They said they had to add a lot of weight to them to get them to balance (RR 5.5oz, LR 6oz, LF 7.5oz, and RF 10oz). They say the one with 10 ounces of weight is "bent." Not from a bump or misuse, but more like it is out of round or oval. They said that they could see the rim moving/wobbling while on the balancer. To me that seems like what would happen if it wasn't balanced PROPERLY, but I am not a tire/wheel guru.

Moved the wheel with 10 ounces of weights to the rear, hoping to hide the problem. In the meantime I have talked to a couple of shops in larger centers that are more used to aftermarket rims.... they were amazed that a shop would resort to bead balancing before attempting to balance with weights.

A little lol out of all of this so far... local shop says custom wheels this big can be impossible to balance. Shop in the city said "we haven't found a wheel yet that couldn't be balanced."

The end... for now. Thanks for reading.

 

[noob]

Had similar issues with my old car, the "cheaper" wheels were harder to balance even when new. My wheel wasnt bent, but was out of round they said though the wheels were new. Had that issue with 2 sets of "cheap" wheels (1800 for just wheels in 20 inch). Didnt have any problems balacing wheels that were multi peice though, since then i figured id either stay stock or go forged or more high end, just bc the extra costs is usually for higher attention to detail and stricter standards.

 

[BananaHANDS]

I used to work at a tire shop (for now we'll call it hotrock ) alot of times we'd get big wheels in that were ridiculously heavy, maybe twice or three times as heavy as stock wheels without tires. These wheels took quite a bit more weight to balance because it takes more to make a difference. Also some guys would leave the old weights on and try to balance them again and add more weight, which is dumb because then you have to counteract the original weight.

The best thing to do is find a shop with a road force balancer if you're still having trouble. A road force balancer ensures the rim isn't off center on the balancer which would skew the results then it pushes down on the tire with a 1000 lbs roller to simulate the wheel being on the truck, and measure the run-out of the wheel/tire combination which is how much the tread of the tire moves up and down off of center. If the run-out is too high sometimes you need to re-mount the tire, other times it's a defective tire. This is a good way to rule out the wheels and might point to a suspension problem.
This balancer can also distribute the weight so it is hidden behind the spokes which is pretty cool.

 

[blueflamed03]

Ive seen one on my maxima years ago that was out of round in the hub area. Could never get it to balance. Flaw in the rim.