Call me anal, I’m already prepared for it, but on my wife’s new car that has factory wheels, which actually look pretty good, the wheel weights are on the outside. Would it matter if I took off the weights and moved them to the inside of the tire where they would not show? Of course I would put them at the same location on the wheel, just on the inside. Is this acceptable, or should I just leave them where they are?
Thanks for any help… Bob
No, you can’t just move them yourself, but the machine they use to balance tires can be set to tell the tire jockey how to balance the tire only putting weights on the inside. Now, some say that this doesn’t balance the tire as well, for reasons that I’m sure other posters will soon be explaining.
This will likely become an inner struggle for you as you try to decide whether you’re going to be anal about the appearance of your wheels or anal about your tires being in perfect balance!
Weights on the outside of nice alloy wheels are an eyesore I agree, but moving them to the same spot on the inside of the wheel was cause a tire imbalance due to wheel design (offset, backspacing, etc).
You could have them properly rebalanced and place the weight on the inside, but I think this would be a mistake. Better balance is usually achieved if the weight is split between the inside and and outside of the wheel.
Remove the weights now and you’ll probably have some noticeable scars on the wheel anyway.
Tire imbalance could be located on one side or the other or somewhere in between. Tires used to be narrow enough so that it did not matter with static balancing if the weight was placed on either the inside or outside. Tires are wider now and yours may have been dynamically balanced which, as was said, would indicate an optimized weight to be located on the outside.
Enough talk! Try one of the fronts and if no problem, do the other front. I would not do the rears until they are rotated to the front as front imbalance is easier to notice by the driver.
Your factory wheels were DYNAMICALLY balanced at the factory. The simple explanation is this: Static balance doesn’t take into consideration the inner-to-outer position on the wheel. So while either method will control imbalance in the vertical plane (the tendency for an unbalanced wheel to “bounce” at speed) only dynamic balance addresses rapid side-to-side wobble imbalances. In other words, a wheel could be statically balanced and the car would still shake like hell going down the road, not to mention the damage to steering components. If you just move your outer weights to the insides of the wheels, you’ll completely lose the dynamic balance of all wheels and probably experience vibrations you did not have before. Shops that sell lots of performance tires and mag wheels have the capability of installing “tape weights” inside the wheels. Their balancing equipment shows how much weight and the exact position, including side-to-side, on the INNER surface of the wheel. As their name implies, these weights are adhesively bonded to the wheels instead of clipped on. This way your wheels can be correctly dynamically balanced and appear to have no balance weights on them at all from outside the car. The cost to have this done is more than clip weights, but not prohibitively so. Besides appearance, there is an advantage of doing this: Conventional weights wiggle just a bit on the wheels and will eventually break through the clear coating on them, creating an entry point for corrosion. Tape weights obviously don’t have that as an issue.
Guys THANKS… This site is a great resource and lots of knowledge here for me to take advantage of. I’ll leave the weights where they are. I’m definitely more anal about the tire balance than the weights being seen. Will look into the tape that was mentioned when it is time for a re-balance. Again ? THANKS for the great information??Bob
PS> Stand by for my question on dash board tire pressure read outs. I HAVE to know how that works.