A wheel and tyre together are never perfectly even. There is a heavy side, and at speed it throws the assembly a fraction out of true many times a second, which reaches you as a shimmy through the steering or a hum through the floor. Balancing corrects it by adding a small counterweight opposite the heavy point. That part is not controversial. Where it gets interesting is where the weight ends up.
A steel wheel takes a clip-on weight hammered onto the rim edge, which is quick and completely hidden by a wheel trim. A painted or polished alloy is a different proposition, because the clip bites through the lacquer at the rim flange and leaves a mark you cannot polish out, on the one face of the wheel everybody looks at. Which is why adhesive weights bonded to the inner barrel are the sensible answer on most alloys: out of sight, off the flange and away from the paint. They only stay put if the surface is properly cleaned and dried first, so that gets done rather than assumed. If new tyres are going onto wheels you care about, it is worth half a minute of conversation before anything is fitted.
Most people put new tyres off because of the afternoon it costs them, not because of the tyre. A run on Kilburn High Road and an hour at a counter is a morning gone. Steep camber in Shoot-Up Hill? We move a few metres, the Willesden Lane area or anywhere else. Blocked drive in Brondesbury? Open kerb in West Hampstead? Either works.
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Driving here is mostly short journeys and a lot of kerbs, and then the same cars go out onto the A5 and hold a steady speed for the first time in a fortnight. That is when a balance problem announces itself, because it needs speed to show up at all. If a vibration has appeared since a tyre was last fitted, it is worth checking whether a weight has simply come off before anybody starts talking about tracking or suspension. It is the cheapest thing on the list to rule out and the most common answer.
A set fitted on a driveway near Brondesbury went on with adhesive weights bonded to the inner face of each rim. Nothing shows from the pavement, and the polished outer edge of every wheel was left completely alone.
One wheel arrived with four small breaks in the lacquer where clip weights had been fitted and then pulled off twice before. The tyres themselves had been perfectly fine. It was the rim flange that had taken all the punishment.
A car with a vibration at speed turned out to have lost a bonded weight from a dirty rim. Adhesive needs a clean, dry surface to hold onto, and the wheel it had been stuck to had been neither of those things.
The uneven distribution of weight around a wheel and tyre as a pair. Spinning fast, the heavy side pulls the assembly off true many times a second, and you feel that as a shimmy in the steering or a hum through the seat. A small counterweight on the light side cancels it out.
Not if they are bonded to the inner barrel, which is how we would do it on any painted or polished wheel. Clip-on weights are fine on a steel rim under a trim, but on a smart alloy they bite into the lacquer at the very edge everybody can see.
They do when the rim is cleaned and dried properly before they go anywhere near it. Brake dust and old adhesive are what makes one fall off later, and a missing weight brings the vibration back overnight. It is two minutes of preparation that decides whether the balance lasts.
Every wheel that has had a tyre fitted to it, because the balance belongs to the pairing of that particular tyre with that particular rim rather than to either one on its own. It is part of fitting rather than an extra, and the machine travels with us to the car.
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