Mounting and balancing tyres/wheels

Whenever you buy a new set of tyres or wheels, you will need a mounting and balancing expert unless of course you are an expert yourself and have your own mounting & balancing equipment.

What do mounting and balancing mean?

Mounting is a pretty self-explanatory term; it is a simple act of putting the tyres on to the wheels and then installing the wheels onto your vehicle's axles.

Balancing, however, is a bit more complicated. A wheel is considered balanced when the centre of gravity is identical to the axis of rotation, in simple words when the mass of the wheel and the tyre is evenly distributed around the axle and there is no vibration during the spinning of tyres. Any easy way to understand the concept of a balanced tyre is imagining your washing machine during the spin cycle. If the clothes are distributed evenly in the washer then there is no problem but when there is an imbalance in there the experience could completely with different and you certainly wouldn't want that to happen to your tyres.

How does balancing work?

Spin balancing- the installer uses special equipment to analyse the tyres and wheels to find any heavy spots that could lead them to vibrate whilst spinning. The tyres and wheel assemblies are kept on the balancing machine that runs through a series of diagnostic test. The machine detects the location of imbalance and the technician then corrects any irregularity by applying small weights to the rim at the specific locations to even out the distribution of weight.

Road force balancing-

It stimulates the force of a road on the tyre by pressing a giant roller against the tyre as it spins. The machine measures the deviation from the perfect roundness so that the technician tin balances the tyres. Road force balancing may be able to detect the tyre shoes that are undetectable by the spin balancing.

How can the imbalanced wheels take you on a bumpy ride?

The vehicle's performance is highly affected if the wheels and tyres are imbalanced. You make experience vibration that begins at around 40-45 mph however, it worsens as the speed increments and there is a high chance that the tyres are out of balance.

Many of us are sensitive to vibrations whilst driving and even a small vibration tin cause extreme annoyance and that's not all the repetitive vibrations tin make the tyres wear out quickly along with the wheel bearings, shocks and other suspension components.

The vibrations may also occur if the wheels/tyres are not completely round and if there is the high spot on the wheel/tyre, they are lined up with each other and the high spot will be even more articulated. A highly trained technician usually addresses this enigma by rotating the tyres slightly on the wheel so the high spots are no longer matched up.

Get some balance in your life

If you are buying a new set of tyres or just thinking that you may need to have your wheels balance then we tin help you find a great installer right in your neighbourhood. Jai!

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