Re: Tars balunced?

["J. B. Lewis" <zande@coil.com>]

At 08:46 AM 2/22/96 -0500, Graydon D. Stuckey wrote:
>On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Robert Phillips wrote:
>
>> I have had a vibration in the steering wheel of a certain un-named rotary
>> engined vehicle of Japanese origin.  
>
>That doesn't sound like a Quattro there Bob, or is that Robert now?
>
>> The tire guy says "At what speed?"
>> 
>> Bob (me) says "Ohhh, about 75-80 and up..."
>
>Last time that happened to me, I lied... "Oh... just a little over 80"  
>100-110 was the truth.
>
>> The tire guys says "My machine, and most other machines on the market will
>> not balance a tire above about 55-60 or so."
>> 
>> My question is:  Where in the hell does everyone who frequents the Autobahns
>> and/or prowls the US at stellar speeds get their tires balanced?  Or do they
>> just deal with it??
>
>The tire machine may balance at the equivalent of 55-60 mph, but it 
>really doesn't matter too much what speed they balance at.  The tire 
>machine must be calibrated to balance down to low levels, and the real 
>biggy is that the tooling that centres the wheel on the spindle must be 
>perfect.  If your balancing tech will humour you, have him rotate the 
>wheel on the tooling, and try it again.  Do this in 90 degree increments, 
>and you will see if the machine is round or not.  You will also see if 
>the thing is repeatable.
>
>	My blower supplier balances at 1600rpm but the blower turns at 
>over 4500rpm in the car.  As long as the balancer does his job, the 
>blower is fine at the higher speeds.
>
>Later,								
>Graydon D. Stuckey								
>graydon@apollo.gmi.edu								
>Flint, Michigan   USA
>'86 Audi 5000 CS Turbo Quattro, GDS Racing Stage II				
>'85 Mazda RX7 GS 12A-leaning-towards-a-13B-soon
>
>
Heck, the tire balancer a friend of mine has in his home (yes, he runs a
side business) will balance a tire down to tenths of grams.  He normally
runs it in ounces but will switch over to grams to check the tire if you ask
him to.  He says the the precision mode is for doing land speed record tires
and other such ultra high speed applications.

Make sure the guy balancing the tire checks for any run out.  Its been my
experience that a wheel with some runout or a little flat spot will not roll
ultra smooth even when it does balance on the machine.  Also if the guy
happens to measure the wheel at a run out spot that will really throw things
off!

YMMV
-JBLewis