Anybody know of a place that can lug centric balance wheel/tires in St Louis, Mo area. Wheel Vintiques recommends lug centric balancing for their wheels and none of the shops I've contacted have the equipment. Any help appreciated Al T.
I can't help but every shop that has touched my wheel vintiques tells me they are warped/out of round/bad. They look fine when I put them on the rear and spun them up to 20MPH though.
I asked this recently at a few local shops close to me - most of them had no idea what I wanted. Discount Tire had the machine that will put load on the tire when balancing... but no lug centric adapter. Though he did say he had some 'straps' that centered the lugs on the machine that would work.. I have no idea what he was talking about but decided Id take the wheels there as at least he knew what I wanted.
I have had this problem with my 1972 F250, old Ford trucks need lug centric balancing too. I think they just need an adapter with fingers on it that go in the lug holes, instead of centering on the large hole in the middle of the rim. If they don't have the right equipment they will never get the balancing right. I could tell you about my saga of getting the truck's rims balanced, but it would be much more that you would want to read........
After being turned down at a number of places I checked in tire department at Sam's Club and they said no problem bring em in. I did and they said well we can lug centric balance but we can't mount a tire we did not sell. Went down the road to local Firestone (which in the past has not wanted to do anything out of ordinary) and got to the new shop manager (an old timer) and he checked to make sure they had the lug attachment for the Hunter 9700 balancer. They had it although buried and got the job done--- it took two men with one being the manager to handle the job. Nobody else appeared to know how to to operate the adaptor or mount the wheel. Conclusion--- They say they can/t do it cause they don't know about it or don't know how. Get to shop manager not just guy at front desk.
At least around here Disocunt Tire tends to hire and desire all work related to wheel and tires and do it right. Like others have experienced... unwilling or un-informed shops to do lug-centric balance abounds. As another data point about Discount, I bought MT off craigslist, they looked new dated 2010 and clearly fresh, and Discount mounted them right up. No matter the store location they seem to genuinely want the work or explain why they can do what you asked. I have yet to hear "no" on something from them. Well...they could not fix a wheel so I guess that counts as a no, but they did recommend a local shop for repair. :beers2:
I realize this is an old thread but, I learned something about "lug centric" tire balancing today and want to pass it on. I took my brand new MT ET Street SS drag radials and new 15 x 8 Rallye wheels to get mounted and balanced today. After reading this thread I called several tire places and found my local Discount Tire store was the only one who said they had the lug centric adapter. They called it a finger adapter. When I got there, they let me stand and watch the process. They had adapters for all the standard lug spacings including my 5 x 4 3/4 wheels. First spin up showed it needed 7 oz. of weight on one side and another 6 oz. about 45 deg. around! So, he indexed (rotated) the tire about 180 degrees and it ended up taking zero weight. The second tire also had to be rotated and ended up only 2 oz. The tech was just a young guy and said they do this with lots of the older steel wheels. And, they only charged me $22 per wheel, their standard charge for mount and balance. So, an old guy learned something today. I'm looking forward to trying out these MT DRs in 275/50 x 15 which are the same height as my front 245/60 x15 tires. And, they have over 10 inches of tread on the ground.
Yeah - I've got a pair that I wish I'd tested for true before keeping. Kicking myself for 14 years now.
I’m in the same boat spent $3000 on # 104 17’ inch circle racing wheels they are absolute garbage you should see the slabs of lead glued on the inside of them to balance them when I complain the owner said he was retiring in a couple of days basically said FU .. they told me to centric balance them I found a place in West Palm that does it it was not cheap I should’ve kept the stock brakes. And look at these welds !
If anyone wants this done 100% correctly (match mounting of the tire to the wheel to correct for out of round, road force measurement, tire truing, static or dynamic balancing, wheel & tire runouts checked, etc.) let me know.
Racing wheel? I would only use it to store car for Winter.... This soot?on welds looks yummy. Be safe, Peace, Kacper.
Wow. I have the same wheels, except 17 and 18". And they do not look like that or were balanced like that. I bought mine years ago before the facility moved to Tx. Maybe the manufacturing process has changed?
I sure can & much more precisely & gently than the tire truing machines do (I have one of them too but rarely use it). The best way to do it is to first match the tire & wheel runouts, matching the high spot in the (deformable) tire to the low in the (non-deformable) wheel which forces the tire to become rounder and requires less rubber to be removed when truing but it's labor intensive & only worth it with new tires. On used stuff I can true & re-balance. I can basically make anything ride like a brand new car.
HAHA you did the exact thing I did years ago, bought 15x8 Buick rally’s, and 275-50-15 MT DR’s Bought the wheels from Specialty Wheel and tires from Summit, Summit did the mount and balance, no issues, tires hook great if the track is prepped and I’m at 18 lbs. more air or crappy prep, I spin, and that’s with a 350 and 3.42 gears
Dan...can you balance with the brake drums? Had that done as an assembly 40yrs ago and it was best balance I ever had....
I've never tried it but don't see why not. For fronts the drum/hub would need to be separated. I think however that it'd be better to balance them independently for a few reasons: You'd have to make sure any time the wheel was removed that it was indexed & installed in the same orientation & position on the vehicle. The fixture I'd prefer to use is made to center the wheel on the balancer using the tapered lug holes, the same way it's centered on the car. I'd have to think about how to properly fixture it but as I'm writing this I have some ideas I prefer to have a plate behind the wheel so that it simulates the mounting surface of the wheel against the hub/drum. If I could figure out the fixturing I may still be able to that & have both centered but not have the centering of the drum interfere w/the centering of the wheel. I'll have to look at. I have a couple drums in the shop. Do you remember a guy in southern MD who used to do match mounting/truing/etc.? Probably back in the '80's & they did it all with dial indicators?
No but I remember an oldtimer at Paul's Frame in Beltsville that did spin balancing on the car and used his cigarette in his hand resting on fender of car as his indicator of vibration. Then he did some weird act of placing weights on the wheel in an X pattern and then removing weights. Quite odd but it worked.
Short of getting stuff to Dano, I have used Discount Tire here in Seattle (Northgate) and they are good. Les Schwab on the other hand (Another quick tire place) has damaged stuff for me. I remember going there and after having new tires mounted finding three of the medallions in the Buick rally hubs were cracked. The worker didn't bother removing them, but just dropped the wheels onto the machine allowing the center post to strike the medallions and knock them off. Ouch.
