On Car Wheel Balancing

Try phoning Southampton Tyre and Rubber. They used to do on the car balancing as I used to maintain the equipment for them.

I've lost contact with them so I do not know what kit they have these days

(023) 80677468

176, Burgess Rd Southampton SO16 3HH

regards

Bob

I'd like to put in a recommendation for them. Used to use them all the time when I lived in Southampton - the nicest bunch of people you'll ever come across in the garage trade.

Can I ask why? The chances of the hub and disc assembly being far enough out to cause problems are remote, and the only way to accurately balance a wheel/tyre combination is off the car.

Well you could try doing it to a VW Campervan

Collins Tyre Services, Hilsea, Portsmouth. Tel: 02392 694741

Cost £20 inc for two wheels last time I was there.

As I've always got a more precise wheel balance by balancing on the car compared with any off-car balancing, there must be some reason it's better. I also don't believe it's anything to do with the balance of the disc etc, so all that leaves is centering. The off-car balancing machines I've seen all centre the wheel on the single hole in the middle of the wheel, but on the car the wheel studs/nuts are used. You would only need a very small difference in the centering to throw a good bit of weight to one side. A very rough calculation on a 24" diameter wheel/tyre weighing 16kg shows that a

10 thou (0.25mm) error in the centering would need 7g added to balance it out. That's the typical level of error I've seen between the 2 methods of balancing coincidentally. Any dents in the wheel centre could give a bigger error than this. The other problem I've seen is operators doing the balancing correctly on the machine, getting the weight and just wacking it on the wheel in the rough area indicated; the weight needs to be within 1cm of the correct place in my experience on a car that's fussy about balance, and there's no way a lot of operators take the care to get it right, but this would be the same for off-car and on-car balancing.

A specialist should have the correct adaptor.

It's debatable which does the centring on a steel wheel with tapered nuts, but on an ally one with 'parallel' ones it's usually the hole in the middle.

If the wheel is off centre, balancing ain't going to help much. In any case, a part worn tyre is likely to be anything but perfectly 'round'.

The manual for my Van (98 iveco turbodaily) says to have the wheels balanced on the van.. there's a lot of rotating mass there i guess (the discs on this van are fairly large.. especialy compared to a cars discs, and the whole hub assembly is heavy and over engineered)

For me on van wheel balancing is much better, it's always worked for me, where as when kwik fit put some new tyres on for me, and balanced the wheels on their off van balancer, the result was terrible vibrations at certian speeds.. a 'proper' balance as recomended by the makers of my van cured this,

I like the idea of the on vehicle balancing.. my wheel trims are the truck bolt on style.. stainless steel, so not as light as plastic ones, so they're taken into consideration when the whole rotating assembly is being balanced on the vehicle as well.

Horses for courses tho, some like it, some dont.. it seems to be very common in holland last time i was there and a few members of our convoy needed new tyres.. some got them even tho they didnt need them.. as they were much cheaper over there.