Balancing tires, weights or beads

noteven wrote:
As a young feller working in the "energy sector" where the pickup truck is everywhere and endless discussions about them abound - we used to have endless discussions on wheel balancing - "them computer machines don't work" "you need to spin balance on the vehicle..." blah blah blah

Go forward a bit to a trip to our very first Indy Car race, Vancouver BC. 3 dummies standing there confounded at the tire tent... technicians were balancing 200mph racing tires using the exact machine our local tire shop had, spinning the wheel/tire at exactly the same speed, and attaching lead weights to balance them... Tire tech looked at me standing there with a stupid look on the face (still easily done) and said, "Yes, we can do passenger tires, truck tires, Indy Car tires on the same machine..."
I use Centramatic balancers on a won ton truck that sees mud roads from time to time and some can dry inside the wheels causing imbalance etc etc. The balancers adjust the balance in the way beads in the tire work - by balancing the whole rotating assembly (inc hubs and brake rotor) instead of only the wheel and tire.

One advantage is a tire can be dismounted for repair without needing to deal with beads inside it.

A tire shop in our region would not mount new tires on "warped" or "bent" wheels - if your wheels were not true this would normally be explained and/or shown to you. There may be some runout tolerance - I don't know what that would be - but if outside of tolerance they would refuse the wheel...

Having blabbed on - you are on the right track - sound wheel and tire assembly in balance is the first step.

I'm in total agreement, when the wheel is straight, the machines do perfect. I haven't seen one 19.5 steel wheel that doesn't have runout, I've only seen 10 used ones. I did buy 2 brand new ones and they were good before they were used.