FWIW Dept.:
Of course having straight/true wheels is mandatory for shimmy-less
motoring, but I'd also recommend taking a good look at the wheels after
the tires are on..... Mount 'em on the car and gently spin them to check
the 'roundness' of the tire/tread. Many tires ( especially the cheap-o's)
will show noticeable out-of-true tendencies, sometimes side to side, other
times as a vertical 'hop', even on perfectly straight rims.. In neither
case will balancing totally resolve the non-symetrical faults; even if
the spin balancer says the wheel is perfectly balanced. I had a set of
cheepie Vredstiens on an old BMW years ago that, although perfectly
balanced, were not particularly 'round'. I took it to an old front end
shop in Savannah GA, and the geezer told me he needed to true the
tires....... I thought he was trying to rip off a naive Yankee ( me) but
I compared the cost of having my upper dental fillings reinstalled ( owing
to the severe shimmy) versus about $30 to true and balance all 4 wheels. (
this was about 25 years ago.) They jacked up the car and then used a
really nasty motor driven abrasive drum on each tire, grinding off the
high spots on the rubber as a second motor slowly turned the wheel. Of
course you lose maximum tire life, but I was ready to throw the buggers
out anyway. Next, he dragged out an old stroboscope and a vibration
pickup that he magnetically coupled to the suspension. The pickup fired
the strobe as the wheel was spun up ( still on the car..) and a piece of
masking tape provided a reference spot to help when attaching the weights
to the rim. After about 2 iterations, the strobe wouldn't fire any
more and the geezer pronounced the wheel balanced. He proceeded around
the car as I anticipated the loss of my hard-earned money. I paid the
gent and got back on the highway and proceeded to break the speed limit
with wild abandon.
The car never felt better, "totally" vibration free, and owing to the
wonderfully flat speedways ( uhh... highways) I was able to renew my (
not so) pleasant relationship with the GA highway patrol. That was the
more expensive part of the day's lesson!
Snap-On used to make an on-car balancer, but it required the
removal of the hub caps and didn't accommodate wire wheels at all. I'm
struggling to remember the name of the Co. that made this stroboscopic
balancer.... ( I believe there are several , though) it wasn't Coates,
Hunter, uh..... it might have been Alemite,,,, perhaps.....
So the final word is make sure the tire is round before you bother
trying to balance it.....
Soap Box safely stowed..
Bob Westerdale
59 3A TS36967
> A good way to check wheels for warpage is to mount them on
> a lathe and rotate them with a dial indicator gauge
> riding along the bead.
Since most of us don't have a lathe with a 16-inch throw
lying around the shop, bolting the wheel to the front of a
handy Triumph and giving it a spin seems to work fine.
Phil Ethier West Side Saint Paul Minnesota USA
1962 TR4 CT2846L, 1992 Saturn SL2, 1993 Suburban, 1994 Miata
C
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