[VAC] Re: Balancing tires and wheels

["Carol and Oliver Filippi" <ofilippi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The obvious  CORRECT solution would be to balance the brake drum/ wheel hub
independently of the tire and wheel.  That way, any balanced tire and wheel
could be mounted on any hub and the assembly would be balanced.  Likewise,
the trailer tires could be rotated without the need to rebalance everything.

Tire dealers are not equipped to do this.  How common is it for an
automotive machine shop to have such balancing equipment?  Many components
of high performance racing engines are balanced.


Re. balancing the tire and hub assembly:

Before the modern computer tire balancers, there were spin balancers which
balanced the tire and hub on the vehicle.  These devices consisted of a
motor to spin the jacked up tire, and an adjustable weight device which
mounted on the wheel and could be operated by knobs while the wheel was
spinning. One of the most successful of these was the "Hunter Tuner", but  I
haven't seen one of these since the 70s.  The modern computerized balancers
based on the German Hoffman design are far superior in that they correct for
both static and dynamic imbalance. [The dynamic component is the "wobble"
caused by a difference in weight on the inside and outside surfaces of the
tire and wheel.  Thus a tire which is statically balanced (will not rotate)
in any rotational position could have a significant dynamic imbalance which
will cause undesirable vibrations in use.]

Oliver Filippi