Are rebalancing wheels necessary when mounting new tires?





[Modified by rltrock, 6:13 AM 7/22/2001]

 

Absolutely. Unless you like your steering wheel to shake, your shocks to fail prematurely, or your tires to wear unevenly. Not sure if this is the case with low speed driving (e.g. autocross)

 

Yes.............

 

Yes.

 

ok, got the message. thx.

 

you also want to rebalance for every tire rotation, depending on how hard you are on the tires. I have mine rebalanced after every auto-x or track session. Free life time balancing helps.

 

I don't do that. It doesn't hurt anything besides possibly your wallet, but tires shouldn't go out of balance simply because you track the car.

 

it's your call, but I know for a fact that hard driving will wear the tires. Most of the time, the wear wont be even. As your tire wears, especially unevenly, the balancing is affected. IMO, that requires a rebalance. When rotating tires (I don't have this option anymore), it's recommended that the tires get rebalanced.

 

vaporsi how did you get lifetime balancing

 

...costco... I've gone there so many times, the guys know me. $7 a tire for mounting gets you lifetime rebalancing, road hazard, and rotation. But I'm so **** that I take the wheels to them rather than taking the car there. At the first rebalance (after an auto-x), the guy said you're crazy for coming in and rebalancing the tires. He tried to explain to me that b/c of the lightweight wheels (sw388s), the balancing would be off as soon as I mount them to the car. Yea right. So, he checked the balance first and guess what? the balance was off. So weight was taken off and added elsewhere. They happen to have a dynamic wheel balancing machine, so all is well.

 

firestone had lifetime balancing for 40 bucks...

 

True.

Yes and no. You may have the outer shoulder wear sooner - uneven wear from the outside to the inside of the tire - but that doesn't affect the balance - the wear is even as you go AROUND the tire. So the balance is unaffected.

Not true.

 

ahh, I hope you know dynamic balancing is balancing the tire from both inner and outter rim, so if accelerated wear on the inside of the tire (for example toe settings), will throw off the balance. It is true that the wear will be even around the tire, but not always even accross the tire. That unevenness will affect balancing.

 

But when the tire is balanced (with weights), then what wears from that point on doesn't change the balance.