Wheel/Tire balancing on pre-War cars

[scott12180]

Does anyone have a method for balancing the tires on earlier cars with wheels of a size that are not compatible with modern wheel balancers found in most tire shops? 

My '32 Packard is fine up to about 40 mph then I get front wheel wobble and vibration.

 

--Scott Dwyer

Troy, NY

[Guest]

If you do a search on the forum page you will find 431 posts on the subject of balancing wheels.  In April I answered as below.

Theoretically you should be able to balance the whole wheel hub and drum on one of those horizontal bubble balancers that were around in the seventies, if someone would do it for you. The easiest way is to go to a truck place where they spin the mounted wheel and the sensor they use is put under the axle.  Works great but are getting hard to find places that kept the older equipment. 

If you slightly loosen the bearings you can  let the wheel  turn slowly until it stops.  Mark this spot and do it again.  If it stops at the same spot that is the heavy spot.  You can put a weight directly opposite that spot and spin again.  Totally trial and error but with patience it works.  My preference would be to put less than half the weight I think it needs 60 degrees in each direction from the heavy point.

In driving my car 400,000 miles  and several sets of tires (I think about a dozen) I have only had to balance two tires.  I always found that they were out of round because the bead was not seated evenly all around or the rim was not true on the felloe.  Many years ago it was suggested that the serial number is the heaviest spot on the tire and I have always mounted my tires with the serial number opposite the valve stem.

On an asphalt road I can take my hands off the wheel at 55mph and there is not a single quiver in the steering.  It took getting the castor, camber and toe in set properly to achieve this.  The current tires have never been balanced just mounted straight and true.

Good Luck

[PFitz]

Scott, you have a pm.

 

Paul

[Guest SaddleRider]

BALANCING WHEEL/TIRES cont:

I must respectfully disagree with "Trin".   

 

Virtually all modern wheel balancers are shipped with  a set of various "adapters",  so that their center-shaft (on which the wheel/tire combo is mounted)   will accept virtually any wheel of any era.

 

Yes - it would not surprise me if some tire shops have mislaid all but those adapters for present-era wheels.  The trick is - find a shop that has people willing to take the time to "do it right"...and that admittedly is a   " stretch.."  - coupled with the fact .....how many young employees at modern mass tire shops know (or care ! ) what they are doing...?   !

 

Some notes about wheels and tires:

 

Bear in mind that modern radial tire manufacturing technology is vastly superior to what we had in the old "bias/belted" era.   Most any well-equipped tire shop in the old days had a device typically called a "tire knife".    Because "bias-belted" tires typically do not come out of their molds  "round",  it was common to have to "true up" the tire to get it "round" enough to balance and produce a vibration-free ride.  I believe the old SAE/ASTM "standard" in those days, was that a new tire was acceptable if it was within 3/32nd of being "round".  

 

These days,  I don't think a tire manufacturer  of radial tires would even ship a tire that was 3/32nds out-of-round.    Again, the standards, and what we can expect from old-style "bias/belted" tires remains true today - in order to use presently-made bias tires on my car without horrid vibration,  ( meaning...get them "round"...! ) the tire "knife"  removed over 5/32nd of tread on the "high" side.,

 

The old-style wheel balancers could not approach what any of the modern "computer" balancers can achieve.  For several reasons.  For one thing, they were only capable of "statically" balancing a tire/wheel combination.    Virtually all of the modern  "computer" balancers not only can get within 1/4 of an ounce,  and tell you EXACTLY where on the wheel's rim to attach it, but also DYNAMICALLY balance - meaning both the inner and outer sides of the tire/wheel combo.

 

Yes, I do agree with "Trin" about making sure the tire is correctly mounted on the rim.   Even with "modern"  "drop-center" style steel wheels,   I have had to let the air out of a freshly mounted tire, "spin" it 180 degrees on the wheel,  to get it within "spec".

 

 

 

 

[JWLawrence]

We had a Bear tire-wheel balancing machine in the 1950s and 60s. We could statically and dynamically balance on that machine. The tire-wheel assembly was mounted on the balancer. We would first do the static balance and then the dynamic balance. The machine was crude compared to today's balancers, but it would indicate where to place the weights. I remember the problems we had with out of round tires. JWL

[Spinneyhill]

Were pre-war wheels made with the bolt circle concentric with the wheel centre? I know of one type that wasn't, but that was in the '70s, the era of crappy quality.

[PFitz]

35 minutes ago, Spinneyhill said:

Were pre-war wheels made with the bolt circle concentric with the wheel centre? I know of one type that wasn't, but that was in the '70s, the era of crappy quality.

 

Yes.

 

Paul

[JACK M]

Lug centric balancing is the best method. Unfortunately about impossible to find anybody that can do it.

[Graham Man]

I would try a local tire shop that do light commercial trucks, even in the late 60s some trucks still had bead lock rims and some of those are still on the road.  I had a wobble in my 1929 wheel, it just needed to be taken apart and readjust the flap, so yes check the tire wheel assembly first.

[Sactownog]

I just had a 650-16 Firestone balanced at my local Express tire in Vista, CA and they did the mount of the band around the tire/put the tube in and tire on then filled it with air and gave it back. I asked the manager if he was going to balance it and he said there is no way to balance my style of wheel/tire and that it will not matter because the car most likely will not go over 55 MPH. I find this very odd and am kind of wondering if these guys know what they are doing. I am wondering if I need to take it to have it balanced now because I am getting conflicting info. 

[Matt Harwood]

So what year/type of car is it and what kind of wheels does it have? More details will give us the ability to give you better answers. A 16-inch wheel should not be a problem for any modern balancer to handle.

[jvelde]

I have 650-16 Firestones on my '39 Buick that Discount Tire mounted and balanced, and never have had an issue.  Have had the car up to 65+ mph for short periods when passing or entering the freeway with no shimmy or shake.

[dictator27]

Am I correct in thinking that Packards of that era have the left front spring mounted with the shackle at the front?  I seem to remember a friend's 1933 Packard having a similar problem which was eventually traced to a worn shackle.  Nothing to do with wheels/tires.

[lump]

I used to be pretty good at balancing tires, when I was a young service manager at various Goodyear stores. We offered both static balancing (bubble machine) and dynamic balancing. Our type of dynamic balancing was done with the tire/wheel on the car.

(I liked that method myself. We techs back in the day believed it to be a superior system, because it would balance the wheel, tire, brake drum, etc. Don't know if that's really accurate or not, but in my shop we always made a chalk mark on the wheel stud closest to the valve stem, so we would know to put the wheel back on with the same orientation.)

We would put the car on a hoist, and lower it almost to the floor. Then we used a machine with a steel drive wheel and powerful electric motor to spin the wheel up to speed. We had adapters for 13", 14," and 15" wheels, if I recall correctly. I was proud of my ability to balance even the most difficult tires/wheels in those days. But there was an element of danger in using it. The adapter clamps which wedged inside the wheel were designed to hold a spinning steel wheel assembly, which snapped onto the wheel clamp via 4 lever clamps. At one store in our area, a young tire-buster was trying to spin balance a wheel, and shifted his body position carelessly. He got his knee in the way of that spinning center piece, and was struck by one of those lever-clamps.  Striking his knee caused the clamp to open outwards, digging even more deeply into his flesh. Not good. I came to work there after this incident, and heard all the bloody details from the crew. After that, only I was willing to use that balancer. 

 

I found a photo online of that type balancer. 

[lump]

One trick I learned with that old dynamic balancing system was to NOT run the tire/wheel up as fast as that electric motor would spin it. About half speed was closer to actual highway driving conditions, and that's where I would find and solve most out-of-balance problems.