Guideline on Buying Tires Wheel Balancing and the Performance of Your Car | Page 9

Wheel Balancing Process
Maintaining wheel balance is absolutely necessary to prolong the life of your tires and related
components as well as ensure a smooth and safe ride. To diagnose and repair wheel
imbalances, the repair technician uses a modern and highly accurate calibrated spin balancer
that tests both static and dynamic aspects of balance.
Advanced repair shops apply a technique known as road force balancing which, in addition to
traditional spin balancing for vibrations and strange tire wear, also checks the wheels and tires
for other conditions that might lead to vibrations. Most balancers achieve this by pressing a
large roller against a slowly spinning wheel then reading out radial runout (deviation from
perfect roundness) and tire pressure. This process is able to detect other wheel conditions such
as belt separation (a situation where the tire’s steel belt delaminates from the surrounding
rubber layers) and other match mounting issues. Road force balancers are able to do a precise
job of marking the points to be matched. Consequently, less weight is required to balance the
resulting assembly which is also able to spin straighter.