Cobra Make, Engine: B&B 408W, TKO 600, 9" 4-link Truetrac, 13" X 1 3/8" curved vane frt disks
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Balance new wheels before mounting tires?
Should I balance my new wheels using metal removal before I mount tires? I could get them weighted at a tire shop and drill metal in the center section on the side opposite the weights.
What Turk said. I just had a new set of tires put on the wife's Miata at a Discount Tire shop here in Mesa. They have a procedure called "road matching" which indexes the tires to the wheel to get the best match of balance and road force. The process involves using a type of spin balance machine which presses a roller against the tire tread while the wheel/tire is spinning, and it measures the force exerted by the tire against the roller as the tire spins. If the variance of force against the roller falls outside of an acceptable allowance, they rotate the tire around the rim (the machine shows how much and which direction) to get the most constant force around the circumference of the tire. Cost was $10 extra per wheel but the Miata is glass smooth on the road with no steering wheel or chassis bounce at all.
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Most BMW, Mercedes, Porsche stores who have invested in the Vibration Reduction Machines by Hunter and alike (fancy name for wheel balancer) can do it.
There are tire stores who have the same machine but will not spend the time to do it, because you can't make money doing index balancing at $8.00 a tire or whatever they charge.
Be prepared to spend close to $150.00.
It spins the tire with a road load in place. Instead of adding weight they rotate the tire on the wheel looking for that sweet spot.
These machines are good enough to balance a square box.
If you have expensive tires and drive at high speeds, it is worth it.
I bought my Michelin Pilot Sports from Costco. I was in the garage with the guys when they were mounting an balancing. They had some nice machines, but we had a tough time getting the rear 335/35/17s to balance. They were as much as 5oz off in one spot! The problem was that the weights are 1/4 oz. We had to double stack a strip of them. I was not too thrilled about how far off balance they were and how many weights it required to bring them in. If anyone know of a place in So. Cal. (San Diego or Orange County) that does the procedure described in the thread above...please let me know
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Indexing tires and wheels is outside the scope of work that should be performed at Costco. Today we trained our guys for the third time on our machine, and I still don't trust them to do my car.
Find a good and expensive dealership who deals in expensive European and sports cars.
Perhaps I should offer a bit of clarification on my personal experience. The tire shop charged $5 per wheel to do a standard spin balance, and an additional $10 per wheel to do the "road matching" for a total of $15 per wheel. That includes lifetime re-balancing, any time I wish to take the car into their facility. FWIW, I stood and watched the guy at Discount do my four wheels. The manager came out and took the time to explain what they were doing, what they were looking for, and what the acceptable allowances were. I stood there and watched the serviceman index (rotate) all four tires relative to the rims to get the lowest readings. Not to disagree with Mr. Turk, but this particular shop apparently feels they can make money by doing this at $60 per car, and it seems to work very well. The tires in question were the Yoko AVS 100s, mounted on the stock 16" Miata rims.
__________________
Some folks drink from the fountain of knowledge; others just gargle.
Yesterday's flower children are today's blooming idiots.
Balance new wheels before mounting tires?
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