I grew up using clamp on heads for spin balancing and the strobe light set up also. The clamp on stuff was quicker, and easier to smooth out the wheel ***embly.
First time I had tires on the coupe balanced it was on a machine you drove onto and the machine spun the tires with the rims bolted onto the car. It worked slick.
Back in the early 60s I used a bubble balance when I was a pump jockey.........did all the local hot rods run at the strip, including a record setting A/SS '62 Impala 409/409.....never had any complaints, and they all returned for new tire balance.
I used a strobe light setup a lot when I worked in a shop in the 70's and 80's. It took a little time to set up but you could get a tire perfectly smooth at a given speed. Bias tires were easier than radials, cause you could see a radial grow with speed changes. The hard part was guestimating what was the best road speed, cause those ****ers would spin a wheel pretty fast...
Well the old bias tires{and new bias} tend to get a temp flat spot,just standing still a short time=Spin balance or any type,need to be done with tires still warm from driving<so they are as round as they get! Any flat spots from being parked makes the balance poor! With all good radial,made vary close to same old tire look,I'm not going to use bias ply ! No one can tell as you drive by,if you have bias or radial anyway! Plus you ride an your piggy back can tell all the time!!
I used one these too as well as one that would spin the wheel on the car similarly like the one in the first post. The one big difference was instead of a strobe, you attached a disk to the wheel and then adjusted a knob in the center that had weights. Bubble balance. Spin balancer I personally like bias ply tires because they’re quieter than radials and roll smoother. But then I’m “biased” toward them.
this is not true of the currently produced bias ply tires. The flat spotting tires were the old ones with rayon cords. the current tires are polyester plies and I have 7 cars with bias tires and not a single one has ever flat spotted, not even my 61 Impala that I did not drive for3 years, smooth as a gravy sandwich
Love learning new things,Ok thanks,happy about that! I changed to radias, along time ago,been happy with them. So I haven't payed the higher $ for"new polyester plies*only know about the extra cost. Being I'm still not seeing any gain in looks as I drive by, on my 81st trip around the sun. Thanks for explaning that part of newer tech. I do think ,any tire of any type needs to be balanced,ASAP from driving for best out come=so it is as round as it can be,for the balance work too be good. Tire shops with new tires,just stick them on,an deal with it,only if they come back *****ing about a vib. of some type. Things happen when rubber gets a dent,even if temporary*<but if there at all,dose mess things up,if work was done ,before things work out. Most are lucky,or the flaw is not enough to feel.
I use bias ply tires with polyester cords. They don't seem to flat spot at all. Nylon tires were really bad at flat spotting. We used to use a bubble balancer like the one pictured. There's a trick to getting a perfect balance using one of those things. With the knowledge that goes with it, you can achieve static and dynamic balance with no problems. The way most tire shops use the modern balancer they are only giving you a static balance.
We always drove the car before bringing it in to the balance bay, one to warm up the tires, and two, to make sure the customer's complaint was really a balance problem (we didn't sell tires). I too am a fan of radials, they don't follow ruts or grooves in the road like bias tires, and quality control is much better now so even cheaper tires rarely separate or "squirm". Think old Firestone 500's...
Any tire, radials included, will "flat spot" to a degree if they sit too long; usually just takes a few miles and they will come around-unless they are old and hard. You are just deluding yourself if you think different.
I like both. I remember when my local tire shop no longer had bias tires. My cheap G78s gone. He said I’d get more miles out of radials. I told him I didn’t want the miles, I just want my beloved ****py tires. At least a pointy bra doesn’t cost much And no, I haven’t checked to get one in my size. yet
OT to the thread but a fyi to the tri-five guys, don’t jack your car under that saddle as shown in Lou’s pic, it can collapse if done a lot.
I don't know where you get that nonsense but I have jacked hundreds of them up that way to spin balance the front tires. I have two Hunter spin balancers This being one of them and a stobe balancer that I haven't figured out yet. The strobe I used in the Pontiac Dealership in Waco in the 70's was spot on accurate and I could make even the most picky customers happy. It wasn't anything like that big thing in the first post though.
Nylon cord tires were the ones that would flat spot. Rayon didn't. Big advertising battle in the late 50s and early 60s between nylon and rayon tire cord manufacturers. Rayon mfgrs pushed the "nylon thump" which was true. Nylon mfgrs pushed higher strength of nylon cord. Also true. Nylon never got more than 2% of the OE market because car makers valued the smoother ride of rayon as a selling point. But the public was more receptive of the stronger nylon argument, and nylon got above 50% in the replacement market.
Hunter, the preferred tire balancer at Ford garages in the 70's. Balanced many tires at the Lincoln/Mercury dealership. This was in the era of bias/belted tires and it was hard to get good ones. Before you attempted to balance any tire, Ford had you check both radial and lateral tire run out. If it was out of spec, there was no way to make the tire run vibration free. It got so bad that Ford recommended having a set of Michelin radials mounted on rims to replace the bias/belted tires. This was to prove to the customer that the vibration problem was due to out of spec bias/belted tires. We actually sold a lot of Michelin tires after a customer test ride. The Michelins always ran smooth.
I only used a spin balancer in auto school. I worked for a while in a truck shop that had one, I never saw it used. I did about a zillion tires using the micro bubble balancer, bias ply and radials. It worked well.
I was a mechanic in a local shop back in the late 70's. We had a hunter on the car spin balancer and a bubble balancer. We only used the spin balancer if there was still a problem after bubble balancing. The beauty of it was that you were balancing the whole rotating ***embly, drum and all. I remember d****** a shop rag off the end of the bumper and watching for it to stop shaking. It really worked quite well. You do need to mark the wheel and the hub so they always get put back on the same way
The strobe set up was harder to get it to pick up the vibration versus the clamp on head. You would put the strobe pick up under the lower control arm and sometimes it would not pick up enough vibration to make the light flash, where the clamp on style you could move the weight around and up and down until you were satisfied with how it felt with your hand laying on the fender.
Read this. Front Cross Member Repair | Chevy Tri Five Forum https://www.trifive.com/threads/front-cross-member-repair.178483/
I read it. Must have missed the word collapsed. I saw dented but having owned hundreds of cars with that crossmember I saw plenty that were dented and conversely none ever collapsed. Much ado about nothing unless on a show car with mirrors underneath.
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