I had thought of that initially, but when I called for prices, it turns out that they charge exactly the same no matter what they do with the tires, so, it costs $20 to $25 per wheel for what you do, and, it would cost exactly the same if you did nothing but drive there and say "mount & balance" please.

But there are other ways to think about this for most people who haven't worked in a tire shop.

One way to think about this is "how much do you learn" when you simply drive up to a tire shop and say "mount and balance please"?

Basically, if you haven't worked in a tire shop, you learn absolutely nothing by doing that.

And there is absolutely no way, IMHO, the tires are correctly mounted and balanced (for the reasons I already stated, which isn't that the shop doesn't know how but which is because they don't care and they think you don't know how so you won't notice).

Worse, if you ever have to advise a friend or a relative, you won't know anything more than anyone else about mounted tires, so you wouldn't be able to recognize a bad mount from a good mount.

And, in an emergency, you'd likely be useless.

Learning nothing has consequences too.

NOTE: I realize you said you worked in a tire shop, so you re an abnormality in that sense. Most others would learn nothing and that's fine with them, which is OK but that's a negative consequence.

This is sort of like saying that you absolutely must have the latest and greatest smartphone because it's so much better than one that isn't the latest and greatest.

It's like the old joke about American accuracy in ballistic missiles versus Russian inaccuracy. Maybe the accuracy matters. Maybe it doesn't.

But if you don't answer this question about lack of any palpable vibration while driving, then you can't possibly defend your statement above:

QUESTION THAT MUST BE FAITHFULLY ANSWERED TO BE FAIR TO YOUR OWN STATEMENT:
If the car doesn't vibrate after a careful static balance, what would the benefit of dynamic (road force) balancing be?

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It's a stormy night tonight so I told the owner to show up tomorrow or on the weekend (since it's expected to be stormy tomorrow also).

I just realized that the spare rim is a DIFFERENT rim than the other four so it might use yet another different type of wheel weight.

Anyway, I will summarize that I've learned that wheel weights are sort of like the stash of nuts, screws, bolts, washers, etc., that we all keep in our shops in that you collect them over time, and every once in a while you purchase a batch of them (and you ad-hoc pick up some along the side of the road, if they're in excellent shape).

To stock all the different types of weights needed for all cars would be senseless; but to stock just the stick-on style or just the FN style needed for most Toyota alloy rims should be feasible, as is stocking just the P style needed for Toyota steel rims.

The weights themselves are inexpensive, but no autoparts stores around me carry them in stock, but all can get them (and they're ubiquitously sold on the net).

I'm guessing that an assortment of P weights, from about 1/4 ounce to about 2 ounces should likely do (but I don't have the experience yet to make that assessment with any conviction yet).

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I used to work in a fish store when I was in high school on a work permit, and I learned a LOT about the fibs fish stores tell their customers (e.g., we would slice haddock in half and sell the thick half as scrod and the thin half as cod at two different prices).

Ever since then, when I see "Boston Scrod" on the menu, I ask what the actual fish is (since there is no fish species that is literally named scrod).

So the great thing about knowing something is that you can tell when someone else is telling a fib.

To that end, I only have a single Toyota wheel in my possession, which has two very different looking wheel weights on them, and, from the looks of them, they could even be of two different ages.

If that is the case, then they seem to be improperly mounted.
Does it make a difference?
Probably not.

But my point is that knowing how to do something allows you to tell if someone else is doing that job correctly.

EDIT: I have since found out that the weight on the right (which was on the inside of the rim) is the wrong type, so, we know this wheel wasn't balanced by the book (which fits my assessment that almost no tire is ever mounted and balanced correctly when taken to a tire shop).

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So that everyone can benefit from the effort, here is a quick summary of the score of lessons learned for the tire weight question:

QUESTION: *What style weight does the wheel take?*
1. For the steel wheels I am working on, they take a "P" type weight.
2. That P type weight is sold in lead, steel, and zinc, coated and uncoated in a variety of weights generally from 1/4 ounce to 2 ounces each.
3. Since I'm in California, lead isn't an option.
4. Zinc or steel, doesn't really matter (it seems).
5. Coated or uncoated, for such old steel wheels anyway, doesn't really matter either (it seems).
6. The way the tire shops figure out the style is the have a template that they hold against the rim as there are about a dozen different clamp on styles of wheel weights for passenger cars.
7. In a pinch, I can use the stick-on weights instead of clamp-on weights.
8. Any tool will work for the clamp on weight but it's best to have a special pair of pliers which installs, removes, and trims the weights.
9. Each weight is designed for a specific shape rim, so, putting the wrong style of weight on can easily result in losing the weight over time during driving.
10. Lots of shops put on the wrong weights so caveat emptor (you have to know enough to recognize the right and wrong weights for your wheels).

In the SUV I'm working on, the spare tire is a *different* steel wheel than the other four wheel, so I'll have to check it to see if it uses the same P style weight (but it probably does).

The main question of WHERE do you get the weights, the answer is even simpler.

QUESTION: Where do you buy weights for balancing wheels at home?
1. You buy them on the web in boxes of about 50 or in an assortment.
2. You will NOT likely find them at consumer auto parts stores.
3. The stores (O'Reillys, Pep Boys, Autozone) can *order* them.
4. But they don't have any in stock where I live
5. Although Harbor Freight has 1/2 and 1/4 ounce sticky weights in stock
6. And industrial supply houses will also stock the weights
7. You probably need sizes from 1/4 ounce to 2 ounces in 1/4-ounce increments.
8. You probably want to have on hand at least 2 to 4 weights of each size per wheel (on average) because you often split weight putting half on each side of the rim.
9. Weights are often sold in boxes of 50 so, like bandaids, your best bet is buying them one size at a time and making your own assortment kits.
10. Some people collect used weights by visiting the parking lot of the tire shops at midnight, to pick up the myriad stray weights lying around.

I hope these answers help others, as the score of answers above are all basic answers to the original question, which I didn't know at the time I posed the question a day or two ago.

Took the wheel to a couple of shops today.
It's definitely a P type.

One guy spent about five or ten minutes showing me stuff about the wheel, where he said that tubular inside weight looks like a factory weight but we both found that hard to believe based on the age of the vehicle (which probably had 10 tire changes over time).

One helpful hint he gave me was to balance the wheel without the tire first. I wasn't sure how that helps things though, but I didn't want to question him too much since he was offering me advice. He also suggested taping the weights temporarily, while in the process of balancing (where he was talking mostly about balancing on a rod with the wheel parallel to the ground).

Another pragmatic thing I learned is that none of the tire installers I visited use the rim gauge though; they just eyeball it.
Also they confirmed that steel is what they use (none knew if it was coated or not, and they didn't seem to care one bit about it).

All confirmed that if the vehicle doesn't vibrate, it's good to go.

One guy said that he used to work for America's Tire and that they balance for free but when I called the local America's Tire, the catch is that you have to buy their tires at their prices. Same deal as Costco, as I recall.

Most said the stickon weights would work but are substandard for a steel wheel because the steel wheel should have the weights on the rim.

One suggested only four boxes of P-style steel weights, which should accommodate most passenger tire balancing.
1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and 1 ounce.

Even tire wear, longer tread life, and less wear on components in the steering and suspension. You may not detect a vibration via a butt in the seat, but that doesn't mean that the balance is as close as it can be or that a harmonic distortion isn't present.

If you suspect that static balance is as good as it needs to be, balance one tire/wheel. Make note of the weight used to balance it and the location. Remove the weights and have is dynamically balanced and make note of the difference in weights and locations.

Dynamic balancing also has the ability to tell you if a tire is out of round. The same can't be said about static.

If your end goal is only to remove vibration you can feel, by all means consider it a success.

That's a fair enough assessment, where I don't disagree with anything you've said, except that sometimes good enough actually is good enough.

You bring up a good point in that it's expensive to run the tests to figure out if a well-done static balance is better or the same or worse than a crappily done dynamic balance (which is what you're gonna get from a tire-mounting shop).

It would take too many resources to run a scientifically valid study, so, both you and I are talking with no reliable data to back us up.

• You take the safe road (so you can't possibly be wrong - and that's OK)
• I take the riskier road (and I run the risk of being wrong)

I'm not worried in the least about the risk but you and I both would be better edumecated if we had a reliable study in front of us that comes from a non-interested party (e.g., not from Hunter or one of the companies with a vested interest in proving the results one way or the other).

I'll look for a Consumers Union Consumer Reports article, if I can find it, but I suspect they'rell be all mom and apple pie garbage like they usually are. Maybe Car and Driver or one of the car mags has run a study? Dunno. I'll check.

But, without a study, as you noted, nobody knows the answer where you err on the side of less risk and more money and I err on the side of DIY and more risk.

PS: I did another tire today, passenger car, to remove a nail, and it was a breeze; so it's just the Optimos' that are a bear.

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Curious; so you believe that an entire industry transitioned from static to dynamic balancing (with all the associated retooling and equipment costs) on a whim, driven by the sales pitch of equipment manufacturers?




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I never said wheels don't need to be balanced.

1. Static balancing is primary
2. Dynamic balancing is secondary
3. Road-force balancing is tertiary

Given that static balancing is the primary balancing, and that dynamic and road-force balancing are not realistically achievable at home, all I ever said was that I've asked tire professionals and people here the basic question:
Q: If a car doesn't vibrate at speed, are the wheels/tires imbalanced?

The other thing I've said, which I can back up with my own experience at multiple Tire Rack Recommended installers, is that almost no tire is installed by the book at the tire-installation shops.

• They don't even carry the proper hubcap wrenches (so they pry off with a screwdriver my BBS hubcaps which are the twist-off style)
• They don't bother to remove the old weights (I've marked them myself)
• They often don't match mount the tire (hence it requires more weight)
• They almost never torque the lug nuts/bolts correctly (everyone gets the same torque)
• They almost never pressurize the tires correctly (every tire gets the same PSI even for vehicles which specify different pressures, such as mine)
• EDIT: They apparently often don't use the correct hub adapters (see references in further posts)

What I'm not saying is that tires are falling off vehicles because they're improperly installed, or that wheels don't need to be balanced, or that there is anything whatsoever wrong with a good dynamic and/or road-force balancing.

What I've said repeatedly is that if the wheels vibrate after I statically balance them, then I will take them to a shop to be dynamically balanced; but if they don't vibrate, then what's the rationale for getting them dynamically balanced?

This is a defensible question which is based on pure logic.
While anyone can guess (so can I), if you have a definitive answer to that simple logical question, I'm all ears.

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I logged into CR and looked but there is nothing on tire balancing that fits the question.

This isn't a "study", where I'm still searching for a valid study that answers the simple question; but this reference is from a guy who asked a similar question (where he dynamically balances his wheels and trues them himself at home).

• Tire Truing and Balancing By Glenn Goodspeed (October 2008)

The guy brought up another problem with the tire-balance shops which I need to research for my vehicles:

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While every person has an opinion, what I'm searching for, just like you would, is a scientific study with valid repeatable peer-reviewed tests, and so far, I haven't found it.

I found this article where the guy "says" his static balance works fine on "his" race cars, but it's not a scientific study by any means, so I'm still looking for the answer in science.

• DIY Tire Mounting & Balancing – a Realistic Option? by Dave Gran, racing tires

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I'm still looking for a scientific study, where I found this reasonably detailed white paper from an engineer at Hunter which discusses algorithms:

• NEW DYNAMIC BALANCING ALGORITHMS BASED UPON COUPLE FORCE REDUCTION & STATIC FORCE ELIMINATION by Hunter Engineering Company

In that paper, they mention that vehicle suspensions are much more sensitive to static imbalance than to dynamic imbalance.

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Hunter_white_paper.pdf (2.57 MB, 254 views)

As I look for scientific (aka reliable) papers, I found this very interesting article which says that match mounting is NOT for balance purposes!

• Vibration - Balance, Runout, and Uniformity by Barry's Tire Tech

Another interesting point made in that article was the fact that the driver is usually most sensitive to the left front wheel imbalance:
The purpose of match mounting and the sensitivity of the driver to specific wheel imbalances aside, the article does clearly state that dynamic balancing is better than static balancing; but it still doesn't answer the basic logic question of whether dynamic balancing is needed if the driver feels no vibration after static balancing.

Note: I sent [email protected] a note asking him the question, and providing this URL as a reference, so, I'll let you know if/when I get a response.

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Nor was that my question to you. I asked if 'you believe that an entire industry transitioned from static to dynamic balancing (with all the associated retooling and equipment costs) on a whim, driven by the sales pitch of equipment manufacturers?' - my question being driven by your post (which I quoted):


I haven't followed this thread closely, but based on your most recent posts I understand that you believe that you have better control over the quality of the balance by doing a static balance at home, as indicated by your opinion of professional installers, but you don't separate quality of work when you attempt to make a comparison of the quality of processes. You seem to want to compare a competently performed static balance (which were all but over when I worked at garages in high school) to an incompetently executed modern balance.
That's a bad comparison, weighed toward the outcome you'd prefer, and not particularly useful in determining if a static balance is "good enough"

The answer to that question was already given in the preceding post.
- as well as sensible, inexpensive method to get an apples-to-apples comparison of the processes:
(an even cheaper comparison option would be to simply take your balanced wheel to a tire shop and have them Road Force it to see if passes as-is, if you're curious.)


so anyway, I'm still curious about why you think the industry moved on from static balancing?

I don't think we have any disagreements, although I'm more cynical on "industry trends" than you are since you seem to think that the industry is more altruistic than they may really be.

Take the customer service industry for example, which has moved toward the trend of robot representatives.
It used to be that when you called customer service, a real human answered the phone.
The trend is certainly toward robots, but that isn't necessarily a trend that benefits consumers, does it?

Anyway, fact is that tires were balanced statically until dynamic balance machines came into being.
The trend went from static to dynamic to road force (and there will be more styles as more money needs to be made and computerized machines made to do other tests).

The "industry" has to follow trends, particularly customer trends, where, the marketing people for the industry have the explicit job of *making* those trends. Witness iPhone trends, for example, where M-A-R-K-E-T-I-N-G has the role of defending as "chic" the lack of portable bluetooth file transfer and headphone jacks (just as two examples).

The vast majority of people are fools (when it comes to technology). The industry follows the fools (witness high-octane fuel trends, for example, or brake disc rotor-warp idiocy which abounds even here on this forum). For every fool out there, the industry will follow with a product (e.g., thicker beefier rotors & high-octane fuel).

The industry follows the trends, or they don't get customers.
There was a "tire warranty" trend, for example, before the days of the UTQG system.

Just because the industry has a trend, doesn't mean the consumer benefits greatly from that trend.

Witness ripped jeans, just as one minor example. They make them that way at the factory, right? Are they better jeans? No way. The industry is simply following the trends that the consumer expects.

Plus, the industry is trying to have dumber and dumber techs operate more and more sophisticated equipment. Does that get you a better balance? Nope. It just makes more money for the industry as it takes a less-skilled worker less time so that they can get more cars in and out the door.

That reason alone would be a great reason for the industry to use automated equipment. It's the reason Eli Whitney's cotton gin revolutionized the south. It didn't separate cotton fiber from the seeds any better than human hands, but it did it faster and with unskilled labor.

So, *any* machine that allows a dumber tech to do the job faster and with fewer returns (which is another critical metric) is something that is going to take over the industry, whether or not it results in better balanced tires.

What MARKETING does is take the good stuff and convince people they want that, and it ignores ALL the bad stuff (it's what all marketing people do).

For example, Hunter's job is to convince everyone that they need "road force" balancing (even though the wheel is actually too small to be realistic - which they don't mention).

Do you need road force balancing?
Hell if I know.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying I can mount and balance at home, but that balance is a static balance.
Therefore, my plan is simple.

1. Balance the wheels statically
2. If the vehicle vibrates, then dynamically balance
3. If the vehicle still vibrates, then road-force balance
4. (I'm gonna skip tire shaving and rim corrections.)

The only question that matters, given that plan, is whether the plan makes technical sense (i.e., we ignore costs for the purpose of that plan).

I didn't set out to deprecate the tire-mounting business.

I only said two things, both born of experience:

1. I should be able to mount & (statically) balance at home, and,
2. I have never seen a tire mounted & balanced correctly at a tire shop

What you inferred I didn't imply, at least not consciously.

• If I could do a dynamic balance at home, I'd do it.
• If I could do a road-force balance at home, I'd do it.

However, neither is practical. So I don't do them at home.

So I'm not deprecating dynamic or road-force balancing.
I'm just asking if I can do without it.

I am not an industry trend expert.

However, I read a bunch of the Hunter PDFs and white papers, where Hunter seemed to be really (really really really really) trying to convince tire shops that they needed their fancy equipment.

For example, all these are on this one page by Hunter: (EDIT: See graphic below.)

• Perform a Road Force® test and balance as fast as a traditional balance!
• Saves time
• Intuitive interface
• Quickly train new technicians
• True "self-calibration"
• No operator input required
• Speeds operations
• Minimizes weight usage
• Maximizes productivity
• Simplify training

Read the PDF I posted prior for example. Read the references I already quoted. They all try to convince the tire shops that they can get more cars out the door with fewer callbacks with dumber techs using the fancy equipment. (It's the same argument for fancy tire-alignment racks.)

Fancier equipment run by dumber techs may or may not result in a better balanced wheel.
I'm not arguing that point (either way).

My only point is that I can do certain things at home, and there are certain things I can't do.

So my plan is simple:

1. Mount and balance the tires
2. Test drive the vehicle
3. If it vibrates - then go to plan B

The only question that this plan hinges upon is whether the wheels/tires must be dynamically (or road-force) balanced if they don't cause any perceptible vibration/shimmy?

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