No not with the new tyres but the tyre fitting places. When a took off my exixting Bridgesone S20R evo's I decided to static balance them to see how good those electronic wheel balancing machines are, well the machines might be state of the art but the people who use them are not. The front wheel was out of balance by 12.5 grams, not much I hear you say but my new tyre fitted only needed 10 grams to balance out rather than the 52.5 grams that was. The rear was checked next and hey... it also was out by 10 grams. So my conclusion is that tyre establishments only have their machines calibrated to +- 10 grams.
The guy I buy my tyres from static balances them in front of the customer. Best way. By the way Peter, like the look of your garage.
I've always wondered how you know how much weight to put on with static balancers. Sure you find the heavy spot, but then do you just start putting weight on in 5 gram pieces until it balances. Or do you get an idea that it needs say 20 grams to start, then add more if needed? Oh, and i like your garage too.
Good thread. My guy static balances them, machines are great for some stuff, but when it comes to know how and expertise they are only as good as the info inside of them. So their pitfalls are conditions and change.
Yes you can get a guess of how much is needed in the first place by the speed the wheel rotates to find it's heavy spot, I started by adding 10 grams and gradually reduced it to 5 and so on until the wheel will remain stationary in any given position.
Did you weigh the tyre? Be interesting to know the difference between models and brands, especially for summer riding
My dealer static balances believing it to be better than a machine, I have never had a problem with the result.
@PeterT what you man cave is lacking is Air Conditioning. 4.2Kw of heating in the winter for less than 14p per hour or 3.5kW of cooling in the Summer. It can be used as a dehumidifier, extracts up to 1500cc of H2O per hour. We normally do a winter deal for £1000 inc VAT, normal price £1800 inc VAT (may be a little more this year), just'cause I'm bored at Christmas. I'd rather be out fitting and talking about bikes than stuffing my face and watching repeats on the telly.
I think this can apply to many places, I used to use a garage for my car and van and they took 3 attempts to get it right, I use Kwik fit now, and one guy gets it spot on every time, others I have to go back again for.
In my experience tyres wear themselves out of balance over the course of thier life. Can I suggest you check the balance of the set you are now fitting (I assume you're happy they're spot-on now) every thousand miles or so?
Have to take the wheel off tonight so that I can fit my new Gilles drop bars, so I will check the wheel balance.
Ok so I checked the front wheel after some 1300 miles to see if the balance had moved in any way. It had not, exactly the same as when I balanced it new. So my conclusion is they remain balanced, I will check again in a couple more thousand miles though.
Doing it manually you can only static balance. If you want the tyre/wheel dynamically balanced, it has to be a machine, doesn't it?
I worked at a tyre dealers as a student, many years ago. I didn't do any bike wheels/ tyres but I did do cars. In those days, the machines could only do dynamic balancing in any kind of automatic way, static balancing was done manually but in situ on the machine. For static balancing the weights were applied on the inner rim and then on the outer rim for dynamic balancing so both methods were and, I'm sure, still are employed on the one wheel. I'm guessing you can do only do one or the other on a bike wheel that is supported on both sides but I don't actually know. Presumably a one-sided swing-arm wheel could be balanced like a car wheel though...
Pete1950 is right.... Machines that spin the wheel are dynamically balancing the wheel, if you then test for static balance it will be out, quality of the machine counts but knowing how to use it is more important, my machine will line up weight with the spokes on request and my car balancer can also measure road wheel\tyre run out so very high speed vibration can be solved....... If you don't feel vibration when you ride then trust you technician.....
Yes dynamic balancing it across the tyre which is great for wide car tyres but a bike tyre being relatively thin really does not need it so much. Good old fashioned way sometimes beats modern day expensive machines.
