[sideoiler10]

The new billboards were delivered last thursday. Had them mounted and balanced friday afternoon. Quite an experience getting them balanced. Both rear tires are quite a bit out of round. Guess I'll have to scrape off some of the high spots. We used a Hunter 9700 road force system but the tires are so poor they could not be brought into road force specs. The worst rear came in a best of 60, the other rear was 41. One front was 26 and the other 38. Radial tires usually balance out about 6 - 8 pounds of road force. All 4 tires required from 0.5 to 2.5 oz. of weight each.

Of course these tires are bias, so there is no way they would compare with the radial tire numbers. I am old enough to remember using the old bias tires on the big muscle cars in the early to mid sixties. I had forgotton though, how hard it was to get a good balance on them. Back then no one had ever heard of "road force" balancing so none of us knew any better.

I have been cleaning up the lettering a little the past couple days. Hope to get the tires on the car in a day or two. It has been raining every day since friday so there is no hurry.

I did call Jerry Maxwell and asked him about the balancing problems we had and the run-out on the rear tires. He said generally they have a customer run the tires through a 2 or 3 heat cycles to get them "round" again and then check the balance again. He mentioned the tendacy for flat-spotting and said the same principle applies while the tires are stored on a rack not mounted. I guess it makes sense.

By the way, the tires LOOK GREAT!

Still would like to hear feedback on driving and any balancing issues?