Originally Posted by JRZEE2000TR4LTD

There are many rims out there that are lug-centric. The old white chevy truck rims come to mind. Also a lot of aftermarket rims are. Really any rim without a bevel of some sort for the cone to center on. Preferably a bevel on the back side to enable back coning which is preferable to front coning. Without the bevel the "edge" of the rim hub can get caught on the cone. This can damage the cone and put "ridges" in the cone which then might even cause coning problems on hub-centric rims. Techs, look at your cones. If they are beat to shit, you need new ones.

One other piece of advice, after mounting the tire, spin it up and train your eye on the inner rim edge (not the tire) Look at the rim edge with something next to it, like the rim measuring bar or the edge of the balancer itself. Your are looking for lateral runout. This could be from an improperly mounted tire asy or a bent rim. Both will cause bad balances and you will chase weights all over. (which you should never have to do anyway)

Oh and one more thing, if you are putting weights on in the same plane 180 degrees from each other (or even close to that) counterbalancing, than something is wrong and you need to redo something. Sometimes just remounting the tire will fix it. Or a match mount tire to rim might help too.


I used to know more tricks when I trained techs on wheel balancing but it's been over 10 years since I worked for that company and I've forgotten some. Wow, now I'm depressed. Sucks getting old.

Originally Posted by IBallEngineer

The long term solution is better tires. BFG's suck, I was loyal to them for years until I got a set of Yokohama Geolanders and I've never looked back.

The "gross imbalance" you speak of is really a misshaped tire, not a balance issue. Normal balancers wont detect this.

"I used to know more tricks when I trained techs on wheel balancing but it's been over 10 years since I worked for that company and I've forgotten some. Wow, now I'm depressed. Sucks getting old."

As Jerzee says, it sucks getting old. I'm only 2 years gone from training techs on balancing and I've already forgotten most of what I knew. Still training, just not balancing.