QuestionHi Barry,
Wondering if you've had any experience or know-how regarding at-
home wheel and tire balancing?
I've done this with most excellent results on motorcycle tires, but haven't
tried it with automotive tires. Tires in question are snow tires,
P215xR75x15". I have access to a professional tire changer, but not
balancer. Could I use my axle shaft (removed from the truck as I'm doing
an axle seal R&R), and securing the axle in a jig with new low friction
EMQ/class C bearings and doing a slow spin to determine heavy point in
tire-rim assembly?
I've done this with motorcycle tires and it is super accurate (down to as
low as 3 grams), but painfully slow. Dead simple and no machine
calibration factor to worry about. Your thoughts?
Thank you for you time and expertise!
AnswerRick,
Your device is a simple static balancer. It will work well for fairly narrow tires - such as a motorcycle tire.
However, automobile tires are wide and imbalance can also occur off center and that causes a side to side wobble - which is accounted for by dynamic balancing.
While static balance is the most predominant type of imbalance - I'd say about 50% in car tires - dynamic imbalance occurs about an additional 25% of the time.
The remaining 25% is what is commonly termed as "uniformity". In a rim, non-uniformity is runout of the rim - slight variances in the "roundness" of the rim. In a tire, non-uniformity is the result of both "out of roundness" and structural variation. The only way to deal with this is by match mounting the rim and the tire such that the "high spot" of the tire is matched to the "low spot" of the rim. You need a special balancer to account for this. A Hunter GSP9700 is one such machine.
Read up about the Hunter GSP9700 at their web site:
www.gsp9700.com
Many folks report great results with static only balancing, but I am sure there is a reason why Hunter sells a lot of GSP9700's. I would suggest you go ahead and try. Just be aware that there is more to this.
