On-car balancing

Does anyone still use that method?. It used to be fairly common, but I haven't seen the m/c being used for decades. Shouldn't be necessary, as all it does is balance the hub as well as the wheel, but hubs are not usually that much out of balance anyway. Mike.

I think the desirability of on board balancing was more to do with covering the imbalances that may come about due to mounting variations and wheel nut weight (especially locking bolts) and even wheel trims, and of course the big pluses that it can be sold as a quick service that does not need the complications and time of wheel removal. (assuming it is a rebalance rather than a new tyre fitted)

Probably because of the strange Citroen wheels and the problems of mounting them on a balancer. Shouldn't make a difference on most cars.

Indeed. Five studs, no hole in the middle => pain in the neck. So if there is still an on-car balancing place out there, I'd like to try 'em.

Ian

Do it yourself, I've done it for years with no tools required apart from jacks, just a pile of weights and some time, plus a careful approach to safety matters. I would never do it from scratch, but fine tuning to get a perfect balance is worth it. I had to do it myself on a car that refused to be balanced by the usual tyre shops, it always vibrated like the clappers after their attempts, so one day I jacked up one front wheel under the wishbone so the driveshaft was at its normal angle and spun it up on the engine. The steering wheel vibrated terribly, much more than when driving, and because only one wheel was spinning at a time, it was quite easy to adjust weights on that wheel for minimum vibration. On the several cars I've tried it on since (obviously no 4 wheel drives or clever diffs allowed) I had to get the weight correct within 5gms and the positioning within an inch or better to get really smooth spinning. It's much better than I 've ever got from a tyre shop's attempts which I put down to centering problems mainly as a fraction of a mm error in centering is enough to push tens of grams weight off to one side.

I'm not sure but I think on car balancing died when everything became front wheel drive? the last time I saw one was back in the 70's . The owner of it told me that (A) it was crap and (B) it was even more crap on anything front wheel drive. Most tyre shops can balance closed centre wheels, it just takes a lot longer to set up and is a PITA . Wheel balancing should last for the life of the tyre, unless you flat spot a tyre or a weight falls off.

Didn't they work by a strobe light being triggered by the wheel being thrown off centre by the imbalance? Run the wheel up to speed, a strobe trigger under the wheel (or maybe suspension?) only triggers when the out of balance weight of the wheel pushes down on the trigger giving a 'still' image of the wheel. The point of the wheel is adjacent to the strobe trigger.