Balancing??

#1

I mount and balance my own tires and have a question as to if you guys get your race tires balanced? I used to use a bubble balancer and now have a spin balancer but with all the trouble I go through to mount the tires correct and place the dot next to the valve stem it seems that after one session on track the tires rotate around on the rim. This throws the balance off of course. I never really notice any ill effects of this and with all the dumb dumbs on the inner of the rim it would seem that this would through it off as well. My theory is that since we don’t see much constant speed that it does not matter much. What do you guys think? Can I just save my time and not worry about the balance and others save money?

Thanks

#2

I’ve run a couple of times with non balanced wheels and not had any problems. I still get my tires balanced though. I’ll let you be the guinea pig :).

#3

I didn’t think our cars had enough power to rotate the tire on the rim. I have been having mine balanced, and I will make sure to mark them this weekend and see if the tire moves on the rim.

#4

I don’t think power has anything to do with it. There sure are a lot of forces when braking too. I personally mount my tires, use tire lube sparingly and put the red dot at the valve stem. After running a new set last month I noticed the red dots are no longer at the valve stem on both the front and rear tires.

#5

We’ve done the same test down here and noticed on most cars, the tires rotate opposite ways. Fronts go one way under braking and the rears rotate the other from accel. Both the accel and braking get the tires to move on the wheels. This strongly suggests that balancing is a waste of time and money. However, like was mentioned before, I still balance my tires. :S

#6

Could rim design play a role in this as well?

#7

What’s the average amount of weight that is being used to ballance?

I use 1.5 - 4 oz

#8

Interesting.

I will mark mine and see the results. I find that RA1s do not wear evenly. Thus I do rebalance every 6 heat cycles or so. May be they are rotating, will check.

Definitely the tires do typically benefit from balancing. I do make sure to clean Rubber out from the inside of the wheel.