Just bought some brand new Kumho winter tyres for my Octavia Scout. They are on some old Audi A4 alloys from ebay so I don't know the history of the wheels but they appear to be in good condition.

 

After getting home from the fitters I noticed  one of the wheels had a very long string of stick on weights on the outer rim. I've counted up 90 grams in total. I know winter tyres are chunkier so may need more weight when balancing but is this ok and within the acceptable limits? I only noticed because it seemed like a long string of weights! 

Edited 15 October, 201312 yr by paddypaws

Does it have a red spot on the sidewall?

If it does this should be OPPOSITE the valve as this is a high spot. Some tyre fitters think this should be next to the valve and compound the problem.

Always wonder what the red spot was for. Mine are indeed opposite the valve too.

I've never needed more than 20g on any wheel that I can recall.

 

I would get it double checked, it could be a duff alloy or a fitter who has messed up.

 

I remember I had a fitter sticking more and more weights and scratching his head once why he couldnt seem to get a balance, then he noticed the tyre had picked up a full strip of weights off of the floor as he rolled it over to the machine!

Thanks guys, there is a red dot on the tyre its about 45 degrees from the valve so I guess that wasn't taken into consideration! It would be nice to know if 90 grams is out of normal tolerances. Still if its balanced its balanced I suppose. I haven't put the wheels on the car  yet was waiting until it gets cold. If when I do fit them I get vibration, I would like to have some definite figures before taking it back to the fitters if anyone knows whats acceptable?

I think the fitters were trying to be  a formula 1 pit team, I was in and out in about 10 mins!

Edited 15 October, 201312 yr by paddypaws

I think that is still ok. Seen cars leaving the garage at work with way more than that. Working for a car parts/tyre company. Spoke to one of the mechanics bout it once and he said that they normaly inform the owners if the wheel needs silly amounts of weights.

Edit: About the 10 minute thing...seems about right guys at work do a car in about that time.

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Edited 15 October, 201312 yr by Howlingwolf

I used to fit tyres many years ago and was told the" Spot" went next to the valve. Opposite the "Spot" is where the tread overlapped and the weight of the valve compensated for the overlap

This little guide by Bridgestone seems to indicate red dot next to the valve:

http://www.bridgestonetrucktires.com/publications/ra_v13_i1/PDF/ra_v13i1%20ask%20doc.pdf

 

It looks as though my string of weights is lifting off the rim so Its going back to the tyre shop anyway.

I recently had a new tyre fitted to SWMBO's Ford and asked the same "red dot" question at the time. Not convinced by the reply from the fitter I asked Dunlop tech services, they responded with...

"The coloured dots aid vehicle manufacturers with their automated fitting lines. The colours and what they signify varies based on the manufacturer's requirements.

The rims the tyres are being fitted to may also be marked so the machine can match.

With improvement in tyre design and as less rim manufacturers show this point this is not so religiously followed by tyre dealers."

 

Still, I like to see the dot & valve aligned

Coloured dots and stripes - whats that all about?

When you're looking for new tyres, you'll often see some coloured dots on the tyre sidewall, and bands of colour in the tread. These are all here for a reason, but it's more for the tyre fitter than for your benefit.

The dots on the sidewall typically denote unformity and weight. It's impossible to manufacture a tyre which is perfectly balanced and perfectly manufactured in the belts. As a result, all tyres have a point on the tread which is lighter than the rest of the tyre - a thin spot if you like. It's fractional - you'd never notice it unless you used tyre manufacturing equipment to find it, but its there. When the tyre is manufactured, this point is found and a coloured dot is put on the sidewall of the tyre corresponding to the light spot. Typically this is a yellow dot (although some manufacturers use different colours just to confuse us) and is known as the weight mark. Typically the yellow dot should end up aligned to the valve stem on your wheel and tyre combo. This is because you can help minimize the amount of weight needed to balance the tyre and wheel combo by mounting the tyre so that its light point is matched up with the wheel's heavy balance point. Every wheel has a valve stem which cannot be moved so that is considered to be the heavy balance point for the wheel. (Trivia side note : wheels also have light and heavy spots. Typically the heaviest spot on the wheel is found during manufacture and the valve stem is then located diametrically opposite that point to help balance the wheel out).

As well as not being able to manufacture perfectly weighted tyres, it's also nearly impossible to make a tyre which is perfectly circular. By perfectly circular, I mean down to some nauseating number of decimal places. Again, you'd be hard pushed to actually be able to tell that a tyre wasn't round without specialist equipment. Every tyre has a high and a low spot, the difference of which is called radial runout. Using sophisticated computer analysis, tyre manufacturers spin each tyre and look for the 'wobble' in the tyre at certain RPMs. It's all about harmonic frequency (you know - the frequency at which something vibrates, like the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse). Where the first harmonic curve from the tyre wobble hits its high point, that's where the tyre's high spot is. Manufacturers typically mark this point with a red dot on the tyre sidewall, although again, some tyres have no marks, and others use different colours. This is called the uniformity mark. Correspondingly, most wheel rims are also not 100% circular, and will have a notch or a dimple stamped into the wheel rim somewhere indicating their low point. It makes sense then, that the high point of the tyre should be matched with the low point of the wheel rim to balance out the radial runout.

Read more: http://www.carbibles.com/tyre_bible_pg2.html#ixzz2htk6cs6o

Thanks for the replies so far so it looks like 90 grams is probably fine but the dots should be lined up but in the real world its not often done.

I once saw an Audi TT with a mismatched wheel on it.  There was a long row of stick on weights on the inner rim which obviously wasn't enough as there was another row of weights stuck on top of them.