I have just fitted 4 new tyres myself using my manual tyre changing rig, I wont know if they need balancing until a test drive but I did notice something interesting and encouraging.

 

Whenever I have had tyres fitted by garages they never bother aligning the white/yellow marker signifying the lightest part of the tyre with the tyre valve (the heaviest part of the wheel), they then balance the wheel usually after ripping off all the old balance weights, touch wood to date whenever I have fitted my own tyres they have not needed balancing.

 

This time I cleaned up the rims after removing the old tyres using a phosphoric and hydrochloric acid mix, I did the outside of the wheels but also the inner rims and discovered that they were not lacquered like the outside (no surprise) and still had the original white painted factory balance weights fitted, all the ones I have seen tyre fitters use have been plain lead.

 

The car has had probably 2 sets of tyres before, the factory ones and nearly new Kumhos when I bought it at 77K miles, this means at the very least there was no balancing done on the last set of tyres and the original balance weights were left in position, during the 55K miles I did on those tyres there was never and wheel vibration. It was owned and maintained by a fleet operator (possibly Forest Rangers, Coastguard or the like) so I can well see them not wasting money on wheel balancing unless it was necessary.

 

Now I am wondering whether the factory or the factory wheel and tyre supplier balances the rims before fitting good quality tyres with the yellow dot correctly aligned and only add more balance weights if necessary? I will have more of an idea once I have driven on the wheels.

 

So my question is:

 

Is it really the wheels that are being balanced or are the tyres the greater imbalance force?

 

One of the tyres did not have a coloured dot which I took to mean it did not have any measurable imbalance.

 

 

I personally dont line the marks up as not all manufacturers put the dots/lines on the tyre.

 

How do you know your wheels havent need balancing if you havent had a machine to test them?

 

The way i generally do it is mount the tyre and put on the balancer - if the wheel wants more than around 120g of weight i tend to turn the tyre through 180 degrees and recheck, it generally drops a huge amount and ends up with less than 60g combined.