Yellow dot and valve stem alignment

[qdeezie]

I recently bought a set of 215-45-17 Toyo Versado Noir tires for the Hyundai in my autosig. Generally what I do is order my tires online and have them installed at a local tire shop. This time around was no exception and everything went well.....or so I thought.

I rode out of town the following day to visit family and my brother brought to my attention the purpose of the yellow circles/dots on my tire. He said that they are supposed to be aligned with the valve stem to reduce the amount of weight needed on the tire. He also threw in the comment that this is something that anybody working at a tire shop should know on Day 1, but it wouldn't hurt the life of the tire. (Side note: He worked at a auto tire shop for years and now works on commercial trucks, which still involves tire installation.)

So, I called the tire shop and they said that the tires were balanced and that they would not remount the tires and align the yellow dot and valve stem. At this point, I'm getting heated because I've been doing business with them for at least the last 3 years and they've been wonderful up to this point.

Afterwards, I called Toyo and they said that it wouldn't mess up anything if I leave the yellow dots unaligned on the tire and if the tires ride like I feel like they should, I will be ok.

Long story short, this is what leads me to BITOG to discuss.

Should I make a big deal over the yellow dot and valve stem not being aligned or should I let it go? I am really not too thrilled with this to be honest. I am looking for opinions.

 

[FowVay]

Personally I'd leave the tires mounted as they are if you're happy with the performance. For future purchased I'd look elsewhere.

 

[gathermewool]

Do there appear to be an excessive quantity of weights used?

 

[qdeezie]

Originally Posted By: FowVay
For future purchased I'd look elsewhere.


Definitely. They could have even scheduled me in for a slow day to fix it for basic customer satisfaction purposes.

 

[Traction]

I would just scrub the yellow dot off, and forget about it. Even road forced balanced tires from the tirerack are never aligned with anything. Even with the dot indicating were the light spot is supposed to be in the tire, you would never know how much it is anyway. Could be 1/4oz or 3 ounces.

 

[qdeezie]

Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Do there appear to be an excessive quantity of weights used?


It's hard to tell because the weights are on the inside. I'd have to pull the car in the garage and remove the tires to see.

 

[Traction]

I have always aligned the dot, but never saw that it made a difference not knowing the imbalance in the wheel and tire separate. Many times I have had to line up the dot opposite of the valve stem to get a lower reading.

 

[MrHorspwer]

The yellow dot denotes the "light" spot in the tire (usually within a couple inches). The thought is that it should be aligned with the valve stem, as this is the "heavy" spot of the rim.

The reality is different and there are other things that can affect balance, like lateral runout (this is often the red dot on the sidewall). Take any wheel, put it on a road force balancer, and match mount the tire and rim. It will almost never end up with the yellow dot at the valve stem. Simple light/heavy matching is just not how dynamic balance works.

If you're happy that there is no vibration and there wasn't an excessive amount of weight required to bring it into balance, there is no reason to dismount the tire and rebalance.

 

[amusing]

Minimum weights for spin balancing is expected
Stick on style weights on inside of barrels for cosmetics with nice alloys can be requested and still balance
The heat cycling of fresh tires , your first travel trip of an hour or more , can be completed with considerable effort to lift car weight off those tires that are heated and with jack stands support the car allow cooling of tires back to ambient
Treadwear DOT race / street legal 200 or 100 is what I'm thinking here.
I don't know what your Toyos are rated at but lifting the car and letting the tires cool down completely helps mimic what Tire Rack and others provide for a fee for heat cycling.

 

[spavel6]

IF your wheel is perfectly balanced by itself before the stem, then yes, the yellow dot (lightest part of the tire) should go next to the stem to balance out the additional weight of the stem.

However, if the wheel isn't absolutely perfect (and since it's cast, it's probably not), The heaviest part of the wheel could be somewhere other than near the stem.

Your friend was right about what the dot means, but not necessarily that it should always be at the stem.

Roadforce balancing would be able to give you the best balance over traditional spin balance, so if that's the way they balanced it, and it read fine, then I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Wampahoofus]

Aligning the dot and valve stem is a courtesy, but nothing will be amiss if they're not aligned. Don't worry about it.

 

[stephen9666]

Don't worry about it. Despite what your brother said, the dots are very often ignored.

Long story short, if you aren't getting a vibration, forget about it and move on with life.

Plus, with modern wheels, as already mentioned above, the dots sometimes aren't as helpful as they would have been in the past. The yellow dot can even just be a starting point. It might not give you the best balance and could require further tire positioning to get the best balance.

Here's what Sumitomo says about it:
http://www.sumitomotire.com/assets/products/catalogs/Balance DOTS.pdf

 

[Kestas]

It may be generally true, but from the reading I've done, the red dots and yellow dots aren't yet standardized in the tire industry, and you need to go to each manufacturer to have them define the meaning of the dots.

 

[Skid]

Yeah, no standardization on what the dots mean.

See the post from Tire Rack in this forum.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=524156

 

[WANG]

This is definitely nothing to catastrophize or get heated over. If it is balanced, it is balanced (the tire/wheel assembly).
Life is too short to subject your body to excess cortisol and blood pressure when there is no real threat to you or your property. I recommend some deliberate breathing, maybe a little sudoku or something to take your mind off of this perceived injustice. If you still feel a little raw about it, maybe go for a jog. Think about the things that are good in your life, and reflect on them for a while. Everything is going to be alright.

 

[qdeezie]

Ok, in reading everyone's feedback, I no longer feel physically heated lol.

I will leave it as is and move on with my life and do the research on what it means beforehand in the future depending on the brand.

I appreciate everyone's feedback and now I can go find a new problem to worry about!

 

[HTSS_TR]

Never had yellow or red dot align with valve stem on my cars for as long as I had driver license, never had any problem with any tire out of balance or severe effect driving.

Remember, no wheel is perfect so alignment color dot with valve stem doesn't needed.

 

[BigCahuna]

The theory behind the dot is ,it's opposite the heavy spot of the tire from the factory. If you line it up with the valve, you may not have to use any weights on the tire for balance, or very little if needed.,,,

 

[eljefino]

I've had cars (GM) where the hubcap bolts to the lugnuts and the valve stem cutout could be in only one of four or five possible places. So they can't drill the valve stem hole in any heavy, light, high or low spot with any sort of precision.

I worked in a chain tire shop and they never said anything about the yellow dots. The gal who trained me also said to ignore the torque chart and do trucks at 125 ft/lbs.

 

[CapriRacer]

Just so everyone understands:

The issue with the dots being aligned with the valve stem is NOT about balance. It is about uniformity (Think "roundness" and you will be close.) The idea is to make the assembly as round as possible and NOT to reduce the amount of balance weights needed.

Second, not everyone does this. There are tires that are NOT marked, and there are tires where the dots are NOT where the high point of the tire is and there are wheels where the valve hole is NOT the low point of the wheel.

So if there isn't a vibration, this isn't an issue - and I see our OP has said as much.