capri's right (as usual).
Now for a bit of reminising(sp). Still feel that the old on-the-car balancers where a specially trained technician spun the entire tire/wheel/hub/axle assembly up to unholy speeds and then attached weights as needed (after everything stopped turning) were excellent systems and would still do an excellent job today,,,,,except it often required 30-45 minutes per wheel! How about a $200.00 wheel balance job,,anyone?
Our first computerized balancer back in the late 70's was a SnapOn. When mounting tire/wheel assembly, one took a HUGE hammer and pounded the attaching nut onto the arbor shaft!! This was to keep it from going airborne if imbalance as enough to loosen nut while turning at something like 550 rpm. (if you want mph., get your tire diameter and do the math.) Fortunately, sometime in the '80's this POS crapped out and parts were no longer available. Next machine was SnapOn also, turned much slower,still required a hood to keep dislodged debris,stones from doing serious damage to bystanders. Even though slower, did a much better balance than old "speedy" it replaced. After a few years, roof of building had catastrophic failure and water damaged beyond repair. Now using two different John Bean balancers, newest can actually be spun up to function speed by hand!!!! No need for hood, unbelievably safer, and tiny little imbalance sensors that touch shaft inside machine are so sensitive results are better than ever.
No experience with new fangled Hunter machine (actually never been much of a Hunter fan[no pun intended]), but man running it still needs to be smart enough to utilize it's capabilities.
Bob
