No sure what you mean. My method was to find the smallest 4 weights that slightly overbalance the tire, then move them in pairs equally until the bubble balanced. Then one on the inside, one on the outside for each pair. No need to aim for 20 degrees, it’d likely be some other angle.
LOL, texases, your description is far better than mine… but the same procedure. The angle was not intended to be a criteria, only a method of describing something difficult to articulate.
I’ve seen too many guys just bang one weight on, some others never flip the wheel even though they use two weights equally split from the “sweet spot”. There’s no real great way to do bubble balancing. It simply doesn’t accommodate dynamics. Wobbling steering wheels in the old days at speeds above 60 were just accepted as part of life.
I’m still struggling greatly with this new website software and know not how to attach anything. Sure wish the web lackies would post some instructions for the basics.
PostScript: you made a great point about the relationship between rim/tire widths and balancing. I’m not sure it would be possible to balance a 265mm… or even a 215mm… on a bubble balancer and have it smooth at 70mph. .
speaking of bubble balancers . . .
What’s the biggest tire and wheel combo you regulars have successfully balanced on the bubble balancer . . . and the road test PROVED it worked
That’s right . . . it’s not enough to say the bubble was centered, and the customer took the car and didn’t come back
Did you guys verify it worked?
You know I’m big on the idea of “verifying the repair”
Today, I had a van in for a regularly scheduled service. Nothing was checked off on the “trouble report” . . . just the preventive maintenance box.
I said I always do a road trip before my service, and also afterwards, to verify any repairs, bed in brakes, etc.
During that first road trip, everything was fine, until I went above 35mph. The the whole vehicle started to shake badly. I thought it might be a tire.
Sure enough, when I racked the van, I saw a bulging tire. I replaced it and balanced the rim.
I suppose I could have just avoided the second road trip, but I again drove on the freeway, and there were no more vibrations 
About balancing:
Static balance assumes the weight trying to be offset is centered on the tread. Putting weight on both sides on the assembly accomplishes thsi task. Putting weight on only one side does not!
I’d estimate that static balance takes care of 60% to 70% of the vibration problem.
Dynamic balancing assumes that the weight being offset is off center, so you get a static component and a dynamic component. In theory, there should be 3 weights applied - 2 for static and 1 for dynamic - but the machine recalculates where a single weight ought to be instead of 2 weights on the side needing 2 weights.
I’d estimate that adding dynamic balancing fixes about 20% to 30% of the vibration problem.
So what about what is leftover? (and for those who did the math, it is between 0% and 20%) - Uniformity!! (think Out of Round and you will be close!) A tire can be perfectly balanced and still be Out of Round.
The video is of a Hunter GSP9700 which has the capability of measuring uniformity - which Hunter calls RoadForce. The video only covers the balancing part, but the guy does explain what RoadForce is, but only does the balancing portion of the procedure.
So it is quite possible to get a good balanced and roundish assembly by only static (bubble) balancing, but some of the time, the assembly needs to be dynamically balanced - and sometimes the assembly also needs to be measured for uniformity (RoadForce, Runout) to be a vibration free assembly.
I think ALL vehicle manufacturers specify both tire and wheel uniformity limits (in addition to imbalance limits) - and it is common for the vehicle manufacturers to require the tire suppliers to mark the high point of the tire (and there is no agreement on how to mark this, but a red dot is common!) and they require the wheel suppliers to mark the low point of the wheel (and while there is also no agreement on how to mark the low point of the wheel, the valve hole is commonly drilled in this location - but not always!). If the low point of the wheel is matched up with the high point of the tire, the assembly is rounder.
And why was static balance OK long ago? Because the vehicles were not as stiff and tight as today’s cars. Today’s car are much more sensitive to wheel end vibrations than in the past - some overly so. A certain Cadillac comes to mind where only 2 or 3 out of 100 tires manufactured were acceptable.
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Not trying to be argumentative, but I’ve got an old Micro bubble balancer and have done a lot of balancing on self mounted tires OR tires that the guys with the spin balancers could not get right. (And yes, I’m proficient with a spin balancer.)
I’m a real nit picker over tire balance or pulls so quite often after getting new tires and detecting the faintest hint of a shake I usually give the tire shop an opportunity to revisit their work.
If the problem still exists then to my bubble balancer it goes and without fail it always corrects the issue.
A dealer I worked for had that old Micro in the back room and was going to scrap it so I offered them 5 bucks for it and snagged it. This same dealer also bought a brand new Snap-On balancer that in the kindest of terms was nothing but a boat anchor.
If a tire could be balanced within 6 or 8 ounces the tech was doing good. After a few weeks everyone in the shop refused to do a tire balance or even touch that POS.
During one group meeting with the service manager and Snap-On rep (the latter 2 continuing to insist the machine was dead on accurate) one of the techs pulled the spare out of a brand new car and spun it up to prove them wrong.
A measly 17.5 ounces out of balance on a small 15" wheel.
And the SM and SO rep STILL claimed the balancer was correct.
The only thing I know for sure is , we ran some dang wide tires on the rear of our muscle cars back in the day & they { Did Not } shake or vibrate . The narrower tires on the front didn’t shake or vibrate either .
When did NASCAR last use bubble balancers? How fast were the cars running that season?
I never had a problem balancing tires with a bubble balancer. But whenever it required significant weight I used 2 weights spaced about 30*, centered opposite the heavy side.
As for using a ball as seen in the video I believe that suspending a wheel/tire using a funnel might give a more difinitive indication of out of balance.
There was an old man who ran a service station here and who passed away about 15 years ago. He had been in the gas station business since the early 1950s.
He still did tire balancing with an old Micro bubble balancer up until he passed away. He told me that he actually balanced a lot of tires that had been on spin balancers and often more than once without getting them right.
He always managed to sort them out on that old bubble balancer
Reading about OK4450’s guy at the service station reminds of an experience:
I was fresh out of college with a lot of book-learning, but not much else. I was working in a factory producing very large mining tires. One day I encountered a tire builder who was doing something very peculiar and I asked him about it. (I forget what it was.) He had no idea why he was doing what he was doing, but he had done it for decades so he was going to continue to do it, because the way he was told to do it was wrong!
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that he had developed a bad habit, and not only didn’t he recognize it as a bad habit, but he was convinced that his way was better than what he was told was the proper way and there was no convincing him other wise.
I’m afraid that OK4450’s service station guy suffered from the same self-deception. Static balancing will never be as good as dynamic balancing and match mounting - the exception being that some tech’s could screw up getting out of bed in the morning.
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Verify the repair . . .
Sure, maybe the bubble says everything is perfect
Maybe the spin balancer shows 0 on both sides
But the ONLY way to know if it was a success is to drive the car on the freeway, at maybe 65-75mph
CapriRacer, I’ve always done just what db4690 suggested. Verify the repair with a road test.
The old man at the gas station did not do this BUT he had no need to. We live in an outlying small town where everyone knows everyone else. Many people who knew him would often have new tires mounted at the farmers coop down the street or in town 25 miles away WITHOUT having the new tires balanced. They would bring the car with the new shoes to him and have the bubble balance done rather than continually making trips back to have the balance checked again and again.
They were repeat customers for decade after decade so he was doing something right.
Normally I do not balance tires on the bubble balancer for anyone other than myself. However, one local lady had her car with new tires in 4 separate times and the subtle vibration never went away. I went over them for her on my bubble balancer and smoothed it right out. Several of them were out by 1/8 to 1/4 of an ounce.
You may have a distaste for the method but I can only say this…it works and it’s been verified. The customers are happy so why argue with success.
Just curious since this issue pops up regularly. Have you ever spun balanced tires for hire and have you ever used a bubble balancer?
Here let me explain it this way:
The tire manufacturer I worked for would get from vehicle manufacturers early, but production level prototypes – sometimes 2 years before start of production - and do balance and uniformity sensitivity studies on them. That would involve a series of blind rides by a ride evaluator where certain changes were made to the car relative to static balance, dynamic balance, and uniformity. We would give the vehicle manufacturer an equation for the prototype of how static, dynamic, and tire/wheel assembly uniformity would translate to vibration quality – and given that we knew what the statistics were for each of those, make a prediction on how much vibration warranty they would get. If the prediction showed an increase in warranty level, we could warn them that they needed to spend some resources trying to figure out how to improve the ride quality of the vehicle.
So yes, I have done many balancing jobs and even made vehicle worses on purpose, plus fixed many vibrating vehicle - either directly or remotely.
So what I am trying to say is that bubble balancing doesn’t address what dynamic balancing does – and doesn’t address what uniformity match mounting does. It’s not a case of like or dislike. It’s a case of the physics of vibration.
.So you have to ask this question: Why would a vehicle manufacturer specify all 3 of those things if they aren’t needed? And why would a vehicle manufacturer recommend that their dealerships get balancers capable of measuring all 3 if they weren’t needed?
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Uh, possibly CYA?
;-]
I could see a CYA for a potential safety issue where a lawyer might find something worth suing for. But this is a warranty issue that never turns into a safety issue. At worst we’re talking about a dissatisfied customer.
Good grief . . . 1/8 or 1/4 ounce is indeed a subtle vibration
I think it’s safe to say that less than 1/2 of drivers would even have noticed
I’m glad you got it sorted out for her