Weight Required to Balance Tires

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Had a set of CS4 Tourings (T-Rated) installed today.

Each tire required between 1.5 to 3 ounces PER SIDE to balance. This is very unusual to me. There were no markings on the sidewall of the tire to do match mounting.

Is it normal to require that much weight to balance a tire? I remember that my Michelins did not need more than 1.25 ounces per side to balance.

Thanks.
 
Some tires just take more. Smaller tires will take less in general. Ive had truck tires want >=10 ounces per side. On a whole, in my experience, Michelin tires just take less than a lot of other brands, which I think is telling.
Its possible to match mount on some balancing machines, but it is time consuming. It requires you to mount the tire, spin it, pop the tire, spin it 180 degrees on the wheel, remount it, spin it again and the machine will give you a mark to line up with the valve stem. Pop it again, spin till the mark lines up with the valve stem and reinflate, then balance as normal. I should also say there is not a whole lot of reward, either. The most Ive seen all this work take out is ~.75 ounce. Most times less.
 
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This particular shop had an older Coats balancer that did not have a road force function, so it was unable to perform any type of match mounting.
 
Originally Posted By: The Critic
This particular shop had an older Coats balancer that did not have a road force function, so it was unable to perform any type of match mounting.

Actually, thats exactly the type of machine I was talking about. Specifically, a Coats 1000.
 
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Call me crazy, but that's a LOT. My experience has been that Q and T rated tires tend to take more weight to balance. H and V rated...not so much. I miss having my trusty ol' Coats...the equivalent of what they'd call an 875 these days. I absolutely HATE having to pay some shmoe ~$20/tire to mount and balance new tires when I used to be able to do it myself in 10-15 minutes. Sigh...
 
Match mounting is supposed to reduce the uniformity of the tire and rim assembly. Uniformity is closely related to run out, so you wouldn't be too far off if you think that match mounting makes the assembly more "Round".

There are some balance machines out there that will deal with the "runout" issue. The most familiar one is the Hunter GSP9700.

BUT - Match mounting doesn't take balance into account at all.

However, if you wish to waste a lot of time (or want to reduce the amount of weight applied to assembly), then you can do the rotation thing mentioned above. The end result is not an assembly that is better balanced - just one that uses less weight.

Read more about balance, runout, and uniformity here:

http://www.barrystiretech.com/unifandbal.html
 
Well, my typing ability stings me again. I tried to edit the above posting and exceeded the time limit. So what follows is what I wanted to add to the post above:

3 oz would be alot of weight for a small passenger car tire, but at the upper limit for a large SUV tires, and on the high side for the heavy duty pickup LT metric sizes. If we are talking about the 185/65R15's mentioned in other threads - then, yes, that is high.

But runout, uniformity, and balance are merely indications of manufacturing consistency - how consistent the components are made and assembled - and have nothing to do with the performance of the tire.

So if you got a good deal, and there are no vibrations, then you might be further ahead just to live with how it looks.
 
My personal observation has been that the Michelins I have bought over the years do seem to require less weight to balance.
Also, smaller rim diameters do seem to balance with less weight.
For example, years ago I put MXLs on one of our Civics, 175/70-13. Two out of four tires balanced with no added weight at all.
Also, Michelins seem to stay pretty well in balance for their entire useful lives, which in the case of the MXls on the quite light '86 Civic wagon, amounted to a little over 90K miles.
 
The Critic,

Just a heads up I had CS4's for 3 weeks & got rid of them because they would never balance & cause my steering wheel to bobble @ highway speeds. I too noticed numerous weights on each rim to balance the tires.

@ the end of the day I swapped the tires for Kumho's & it eliminated the bobbling issue.

Regards,
~Button
 
My parents have Cooper CS4 Touring, T-rated 225/55/18, mounted on their 2007 Mercury Montego sedan. They took very little weight to balance and provide a very smooth and quiet ride.

The Coopers are much better than the OEM Pirelli P6's.

Yesterday I had Sam's Club mount and balance four of their Goodyear Assurance Touring tires, T-rated 225/60/16, on my '06 Chevy Impala. Very little weight was required and the tires ride smoothly.

I recently saw a brand new Hyundai Sonata at a dealer with no less than 8 stick on balance weights on a couple of the wheels. The car had Michelin tires. Such a long strip of wheel weights was hard to miss when just glancing down at the wheels!
 
some tires just need weight to balance. the 275/40/17 Michelin Pilot Sports i had on my mustang needed less than 1oz per tire to balance using stick on weights. how are the wheels? were the bent or burgled at all?
 
Originally Posted By: rszappa1
I have found that Michelins I have purchased in the past and run currently usually need very little weight per tire....
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I asked a Hunter engineer about the max allowable balancing weight, and he said that the tire engineers tell him that as long as enough weight can fit on the rim to get 'er balanced, the tire is OK to put out with all that lead.

I think that the amount of weight needed to balance is one sign of tire quality. Or, the shop should have used a lug-centric adapter to center that particular wheel on the balancing machine by the lug circle, not the center pilot hole, and they didn't. (Certain wheels do not have the pilot hole machined in the true center.)
 
When I used to work at my Dad's tire shop in high school, if a tire called for alot of balance weight on one side (2.5-4 oz), we would de-flate the tire, break the beads on both sides and turn the tire 180 deg from the valve stem (marking the tire at the valve stem location). Usually that would bring the weight back down to a reasonable level.
 
I had a front tire on my Goldwing that needed 90 grams to balance. The shop manual specifies a maximum of 60 grams. The shop did the same thing, spun it 180 degrees, and it rebalanced with just 45 grams.
 
Ideally a good tire should balance with zero weight. If the rim is balanced well.

I have had 425/65R22.5 tires that required ZERO weight to balance and run smooth as silk down a good highway. Your telling me that they can get a 235LB 45" diameter tire to run true and smooth with zero weight @75 mph but yet it takes 6 oz to balance a 16" tire on my pickup?

Needless to say that tire went back
 
the amount of weight needed is relative to the wheel and tire, not just the tire.

Many here are assuming the wheel has no part in this.

But if you have a straight, well balanced wheel then less weight means you have a better balanced tire.

A great deal of the 'quality' occurs with the tire tech. If he is sharp he has a variety of tricks to compensate.
 
Originally Posted By: ryster
I recently saw a brand new Hyundai Sonata at a dealer with no less than 8 stick on balance weights on a couple of the wheels.

I just got my set of winter rims and tires from TireRack (they use Hunter Roadforce balancer). One of them has 16 sticks on it (4 oz). That's on a brand new alloy rim and 215/60/16 Q-rated tire. Uhh...
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I'm gonna put it on the back of the car probably. We'll see how it feels...
 
If the wheel is balanced properly, it really isn't a concern how much weight is used though, right?
 
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