How to Balance Your Car Tires By Hand

Corroft

Editor

posted on 9 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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Balancing your wheels after the tires have just been mounted is a must, and you should do it regularly every time you do a tire rotation. Balancing your wheel can increases the life of the tires, and save your money in the long run. Unbalanced wheels can cause static vibration to the vehicle, dynamic vibration to the steering wheel, uneven tread wear on the tires, poor fuel mileage, and possibly unsafe driving.

Steps

Put safety first. Before you can begin to do anything, make sure you are protected by wearing some safety equipment. Make sure you are wearing steel toes boots, long pants, safety glasses or goggles, and gloves.

Ensure you have proper tires. Make sure the tires that you have on the rims are good for the road. No cracks on the sidewall, and to have at least 4/32nd (50%) of tread depth.

Make sure you have no center caps and wheel weights. Before mounting the wheel onto the machine, make sure you have your center caps off (if you have them), and the old wheel weights from the previous balancing off. This is to ensure that you get the most accurate results from the machine.

Mount the wheel. After you have done all the previous steps, you can now safely mount your wheel onto the machine. Once it is on, double check to make sure that the wheel is snug tight.

Measure the wheel. Once the wheel is on, the machine will want to know the size of the rim. You will have to measure the height of the rim, as well as the width

Select your vehicle. Depending on the machine you're using, it may have a feature which allows you to choose what type of vehicle this wheel will be going on so it can put the proper amount of road force when it’s being tested.

Enter proper tire pressure accordingly to your vehicle specifications. If you don’t do this before closing down the hood, it will ask you if you have done it or not to be a reminder.

Start. Once you have measure your rims and have chosen the proper type of vehicle, you can simply presses start or close the hood.

Install wheel weights. Once the machine has finished testing the road force and balance the wheel, it will tell you how much weight it wants and what side of the wheel.

Rebalance. Once you have install the wheel weights, you want to rebalance the wheel to make sure you added the proper amount of the wheel weights, and at the proper spot of the rim it has asked.

Finish up. After rebalancing your wheel and it says “ok”, you are now done and can take the wheel off the machine. The wheel is now ready to be install on the vehicle.