[Guest]

I parked my Prius with the front wheel turned to the left. I noticed what appeared to be a balance weight on the inside rim, which normally can not be seen with the wheels straight. I have heard of a wheel balanced by putting weights on both sides of the rim. What I have a question about is the placement of the weights. The inside weight was at the six o'clock position and the outside weight was at the 2 o'clock position. Is this right? I thought that a tire was balanced by putting a weight at a single position. For a more accurate balance divide the weight in half and put one inside and the other outside of the rim. I thought both weights should be at the same, o'clock position. Can someone enlighten me on this?

 

[Guest]

Dynamic balancers will show the installer where to put the weights. These placements are based on the computer display after the tire balance is analysed.

Old bubble balancers would simply put the weights on the same location on each side of the rims, but that was not necessarily the optimum placement.

The new dynamic balancing techniques are currently the better of the 2 techniques.

steve d.
'02 super white 12,600 miles.

[%sig%]

 

[Guest]

I believe dynamic balancing equipmrnt goes back to about the late 1950's when they had big heavy cars with wide tires and tail fins! I am somewhat familiar because I had a 1959 Buick Invicta Convertable that weighed almost 5,000 lbs, and had lots of trouble with "Shimmy" With dynamc weight balancing they not only measured the weight of the rubber by circumference, but also the weight of the rubber on the inside side wall as opposed to the outside sidewall. This was especially evident back in those days when they had real wide white sidewall tires. It was very common to place weights on the inside rim not opposite but divergent to the same amount of weights on the outside rim plus additional weights at a different angle on either the inside or outside rim, to compensate for the slight irregularity on the large wide tires, so this is actually nothing new, but the problem was that very few dealers and tire stores had this kind of equipment at that time. Convertables were very dangerous because they had no roof supporting the undercarriage frame. I know because if you did not slow down on crossing railroad tracks, the steering wheel could throw you in a ditch!

regards,
Don Good (SE PA and retired)