wheel balance?

[Guest 1930]

I am hoping that someone can explain to me the process of balancing wood wheels, is this neccessary and can I do this myself, is it worth farming out to someone if I cannot do it myself, it seems to me that a piece of wood is going to contantly be changing so I just dont want to waste my money if it is not neccessay or a long lasting benefit. Thanks alot for any replies...Jason

[gundog99]

I fitted the rims and tyres to the front wheels, took them of the axle and had the whole assembaly balance at my tyre shop.

[Paul Bohlig]

The Model T Ford Club of America has a number of video tapes for sale. their web site is mtfca.com

Go to: mtfca store

Then: restoration videos

Then: Tape 1-1 Balancing tires. Costs $ 12 + s/h

Anumber of their other videos also apply to the general operation of vehicles in the DBC era

Paul

[Guest 1930]

I appreciate the info and will check that out, it is a little hard for me to understand how a modern day tire shop could balance a set of wodden wheels, I am a bodyman and am a fairly competent mechanic but I dont see how I could possibly mount the wheels to my machine and balance them.

[gundog99]

This can will only work on the front Wheels (with the two bearings removed). The balance machine (The type used in the UK) has two tapeing cones which lock the wheel in place, even a Vintage wheel with its two different diamiter holes can be balanced.

[Rusty_OToole]

I don't think they even bothered with balancing wheels in the wooden wheel era. The diameter of the wheel was so large, and road speeds so low, that the wheel didn't rotate fast enough to need balancing.

But if you did balance it, there is no reason it wouldn't keep its balance as well as a steel wheel.

[Rusty_OToole]

Any good tire shop should be able to spin balance all 4 wheels on the car.

[34dodger]

Rusty is correct about having the wheels/tires spun balanced on the car. The problem is finding a shop that still uses the old strobescopic wheel balancers as most have upgraded long ago to the off car computerized balancers. Sometimes alignment/frame shops have them. I bought one a a swap meet to do my cars but have not got the process totaly figured out yet. If anybody knows how to run one of these or has the instructions for one of these machines plese let me know.

Bill

[kd4gfy]

My 26 has wooden wheels. The problem is that the tires for these cars are bias belted and if they sit for any length of time, the material on the inside of the tire settles on the bottom of the tire. Driving them for about an hour on hot pavement will redistribute the inner material and the tire will begin to run smooth. No ballancing will change the properties of the bias belted tire that has set for more than 1 week.

[Rusty_OToole]

This is a common problem on bias ply tires cause by flat spots. When the tire sits in the same place the bottom of the tire flattens out. It takes a few miles of "thump thump thump" before the tire gets round again.

You can almost eliminate the "thump thump" if you over inflate the tires to 45 or 50 lbs for the first week after you put them on. Then let the pressure down to the normal setting.

Unfortunately this only works on new tires. You can try it on your tires, it may help to a certain degree but not as much as if you do it on new tires.

The only other solution is to jack up the car and set it on stands when parked for long periods, so the tires are off the ground. Believe it or not when your car was new a lot of owners did this to save the tires.