How much lead weight is too much on a wheel balance?

[alittlebitconcerned]

Hello folks.

There was a thread not too long ago that ended up talking about how much weight ended up on a blokes tyres after he got them balanced, the general concensis being that the tyre shop used too much. Iv'e searched but cannot find it again so am left wondering how much is too much.

Iv'e just had five new 235/85/16 Yokohama geolandar ATS's put on and am surprised by the amount of weight it took to balance them compared to what was used to balance my old tyres that came off. 2 tyres have 160g's of weight. Is this excessive?

[mike_ie]

For new tyres, 160g per wheel seems on the high side, unless your rims are pretty bent up. I don't know a huge amount on the subject, but don't some newer tyres have markings that are supposed to line up with the valve stem on the rim?? Last time I had a tyre put on, they rotated the tyre on the rim and rebeaded it, to make it balance out better.

[alittlebitconcerned]

I should add that the two tyres with 160g worth of weights, had two 60g weights side by side and then another 40g weight about a third of the way around the rim.

Just got back from showing a couple of mechanics. One said they werent done correctly, the other said no issue. Still confused.

[mike_ie]

Did the mechanics that said it wasn't done correctly give you any idea of exactly what was wrong with the setup??

[alittlebitconcerned]

His opinion was based on the the tyre being a good quality tyre (shouldn't be out of round I guess?), the amount of weight, that the weights were spread out so far, and he suggested that the rims I have (standard puma alloys) can sit be a bit difficult to put correctly on the balancer. He said they have the tendency to not sit completely flat which throws evrything out.

[ugu80]

Take it onto the freeway and all the way up to 110km/h. If it has no shake or shudder at any speed, why worry.

[bblaze]

wheel weights that are not placed together indicate the weight wasnt correctly placed in the first place and had been put seperate to counter balance a shoddy job. the bigger the wheel and the more weight the harder to get a good balance
cheers
blaze

[isuzurover]

wheel weights that are not placed together indicate the weight wasnt correctly placed in the first place and had been put seperate to counter balance a shoddy job. the bigger the wheel and the more weight the harder to get a good balance
cheers
blaze

What he said. If the rim was an old battered series rim with a cross ply it might be understandable, not an alloy.

[rick130]

Big, high profile/flotation tyres may require more lead than a similar OD tyre that uses a larger diameter wheel purely as the lead/rim is further away from the OD of the tyre.

[isuzurover]

Big, high profile/flotation tyres may require more lead than a similar OD tyre that uses a larger diameter wheel purely as the lead/rim is further away from the OD of the tyre.

Agreed, but in this case we are talking about a 31.9" AT radial on an OEM 16" alloy rim.

My modified, hot dip (not spun) galvanised disco steels with 33's didn't need that much weight.