The car has been handling a little funny lately, so I checked the tire pressures and tires for any abnormalities and saw that I threw the front driver wheel weight somewhere. How much does this throw off steering/handling? Or is it not a big deal?

 

Dude, it's $10 to get the tire balanced. Your car will vibrate at certain speed w/o proper wheel weights. I doubt it's anything serious, but get your car to a local tireshop.

 

Your wheels are not balanced with out the weights. This should introduce steering wheel shake at high way speeds. The weights definitely make a difference at speed. But you would notice some steering wheel wobble before noticing problems with oversteer/understeer etc, so if your experiencing no wheel shake but abnormal handling I am not sure if the wheel weights are the problem.

 

they will make a vibration. if you are vibrating while crusing down the road, first thing id check is the wheel weights, they are prone to fly off during vtak lol

 

Depends on how out of balance the wheel by itself is, and also how fast you're driving. I lost about half my wheel weights on one of the front wheels during a race at Summit Point, and at speeds between 85-110, I couldn't see straight. My eyeballs were vibrating so bad that everything was blurry... of course my seat is bolted directly to the floor, but still... it can make a big difference.

 

I just got my wheels balanced over the weekend. Anything over 50 mph the steering wheel shook like a **** -- now = butter

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Mugen Mike &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I just got my wheels balanced over the weekend. Anything over 50 mph the steering wheel shook like a **** -- now = butter </TD></TR></TABLE>

thats good you got it takin care of. if you didnt it could of had bald spots on ur tire and highs and lows on the thread.! would of wasted a tire!

 

its important unless you got like 19's like i had on my civic, their was no point to that to balance...ha....but yea def. balance and it is mad cheap

 

just take it to a tire shop

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by XR4racer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Depends on how out of balance the wheel by itself is, and also how fast you're driving. I lost about half my wheel weights on one of the front wheels during a race at Summit Point, and at speeds between 85-110, I couldn't see straight. My eyeballs were vibrating so bad that everything was blurry... of course my seat is bolted directly to the floor, but still... it can make a big difference. </TD></TR></TABLE>

You too?

Yeah, unbalanced wheels suck.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jason Franza &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You too?

Yeah, unbalanced wheels suck.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I gave up on re-balancing after i mounted the tire (for the track).