No wheel and tyre assembly comes out perfectly even. There is always a heavy point somewhere in the combination of rim, tyre, valve and sensor, and balancing is nothing more than putting a small counterweight opposite it. The interesting part is where that weight goes. A clip-on weight is a block hammered onto the lip of the rim flange, held there by a steel clip. A sticky weight is a strip of small blocks with adhesive backing, pressed onto the inside of the rim barrel where nothing can see it.
Steel wheels take clips and always have. Alloys are a different matter. On a painted or polished alloy the clip has to bite into the lacquer to grip, and that break in the finish is where corrosion starts a couple of winters later. On plenty of modern designs the flange has no lip square enough to hold a clip anyway. That is why most alloys get adhesive weights, and it is also why the surface they go onto has to be cleaned and dried first. A weight stuck onto a cold, damp, salted rim will let go, usually within a few weeks, and the vibration that follows gets blamed on the tyre. It is a small part of the job that decides whether the balance lasts.
You choose the tyre and you choose the time; everything after that is our problem. The van carries the stock, the fitting gear and the balancer, so the work happens wherever the car is already sitting, whether that is a driveway in Bow Common, a side street in Bow town centre or the corner of a car park at work. Nobody hands you a ticket and points at a waiting room, and you are not driving a worn tyre on Mile End Road to reach one. Balancing is part of the fitting rather than an extra, the valve is replaced if it needs it, and the pressures are set to the figure on your door plate before we pack up. Give us the size off the sidewall and your E3 postcode and we will tell you what we can bring.
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Bow driving is stop and start with the odd fast run to the flyover thrown in, which is exactly the pattern that turns a balance problem into something you can feel. At town speeds a lost weight is invisible. At speed on the A11 it arrives through the steering wheel. Add a winter of salt and grit off the roads around Bromley-by-Bow edge and the inside of a rim is not a surface anything will stick to without preparation first. That preparation is invisible in the finished job, which is precisely why it is worth mentioning before it is done.
A car near Old Ford came to us with a vibration a month after a set fitted elsewhere. Two adhesive weights were missing, and the clean line of adhesive left behind on the rim showed they had gone on to a wet surface.
A set fitted on Fish Island came off wheels that had been clipped for years. Under every weight the lacquer was broken and the alloy beneath had started to bloom, so the new weights went inside the barrel instead.
A wheel balanced with a single weight can still shake, because the imbalance often sits at an angle across the rim rather than in one plane. The machine gives an inner figure and an outer figure, and both get answered rather than just the larger one.
Where they mount. A clip-on hooks over the lip of the rim flange and is tapped into place. A stick-on is a strip of small blocks with adhesive backing, fitted to the inside of the rim barrel out of sight. They do the same job, and which one a wheel takes depends entirely on the wheel.
Because a clip has to bite into the finish in order to grip, and once the lacquer is broken the alloy underneath starts corroding within a winter or two. A good many alloy designs also have no flange lip that will hold a clip properly. Adhesive inside the barrel avoids both problems at once.
Almost always because of what was underneath them. The adhesive wants a clean, dry surface above freezing, and a rim that has just come off a February road is none of those three things until it has been cleaned and warmed. Done properly they stay put for the life of the tyre.
It happens on the spot. The balancer travels with us, and the wheel is cleaned, weighted and checked where the car is standing. You can have the readout if you want it. Nothing about balancing needs a workshop; it needs the right machine and a clean rim.
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