Do you guys think it would be feasable in this day and age for a manufacturer to build a simple system that might essentially consist of a light weight magnetic or pressurized liquid filled tube running around the inside of the stock wheels on a vehicle? Combine that with a sensor imbedded in the wheels to detect imbalance in the wheels (vibration), and then a method whether magnetic or pressure based to get X amount of the fluid to move to the appropriate location within the wheel and stay there to balance the tire. It'd basically be like automatically detecting and correcting wheel balance issues instead of depending on the lackey at the nearest firestone to get it right (I've had more than a few times where I got my wheels back with a worse balance than I brought them in with!).

Seems like it could have a decently high development cost, but once developed shouldn't add too much cost to the production of the vehicle as long as it could be made reliable and dependable fairly easily.

I know it sure would make the driving experience of a lot of cars more enjoyable, as a lot of people perceive vibration from unbalanced wheels/tires to be the car's fault (ie: suspension or chassis or whatever) and not just a simple tire balancing away from being fixed.

 

Let's also put a toilet in the front seat so we can take a poop without having to stop at the rest area!

 

Kinda sounds like a $30 solution to a $.50 problem.

Wheel weights are cheap.

CAN bus interface = $5.00
Controller = $20
Wires = $.25 EACH, minimum... (not counting connectors)
Sensor = ???
Mechanicals/tube of goo = ??? Magneto-rheological fluids are expensive...

Furthermore, the interface between the sensor in the wheel and the body electrical system is problematic... the wires keep getting bound up around the axle...

 

Yes, I immediately thought "what the heck would power this?" You'd need a heck of a battery to shuffle fluids/weights around on a wheel. How would it charge? How much weight would it add?

Solution: find a competent person to work on your car (NOT the minimum-wage monkeys at Firestone). Or learn to work on it yourself.

 

Uh... so do you have a computerized wheel balaning machine at home or do you just experiment every so often with moving your wheel weights around?

And getting your wheels balanced profesionally can be pretty time consuming and expensive over the life of the car, plus a hassle if they don't do it right the first time.

 

No, I have a competent person to work on the car. But I do know how to use the machine, too.

And there ain't no experimentation about it--it's balanced, or it isn't.

 

I thought you meant you did it yourself without the machine and I didn't understand how that would work unless you just experimented.

 

the best time to have the balance checked/done is when your tires are rotated. find a shop that deals more with wheels and tires than general repair and you shouldn't have a proplem. most tires will only need to be balanced twice during their lifetime if the machine is calibrated right when your wheels are done. i have 37" Goodyears on my Ford Ranger and to date i've put about 20K miles on them. they have been balanced ONCE(when they were originally mounted). my old shop had a very good Hunter machine that was regularly maintained and calibrated. i'm lucky in i get to do them myself, but the best thing you can do is research the different machines and find a shop in the area that uses one you'd prefer.



and as to the auto balancing idea WAY too much engineering involved.

 

This one actually had me
Quote of the thread declared.

 

I thought there was some sytem that semi-trucks can use with a bag of powder between teh wheel and tire or something like that. It naturally finds where it needs to be.

i have no idea, I jsut thought someone was telling me about such a thing.

 

They already did it... it's called Equal and has been out for quite a long time and is pretty popular...

http://www.imiproducts.com/equal/index.aspx

 

Interesting... guess my idea wasn't so crazy, even if the method of approach was considerably more complicated.

 

Here's an interesting point to drive home next time you have a car in the shop for rotation/balancing...

After the tech has balanced one tire, and dismounted it from the machine, excuse yourself and ask him/her to please remount the tire and do a dry-run test again... same machine, same tire/wheel that just was "balanced".
Yeah, they'll freak out a little, but just ask them to humor you and do it.
If the machine is correctly calibrated and the wheel is not bent/warped, then the tire and wheel should register "0 oz." and all green lights. If the tire registers any weight needed in any location, then either the machine is not correctly calibrated and/or you have a bent or warped rim. A truely balanced wheel and tire will be accurate no matter how many times you remount it.
A bent rim or inaccurate machine are incapable of reproducing results between remounting. In all fairness, even a competent tech with a good machine should remount the wheel after initial balance to check for this anyways, but almost none do this because it takes an extra 1-2 minutes and some effort on their part.

I have a huge problem with shops not wanting to pay to have their machines calibrated often. The techs beat the sh1+ out of the machines slamming tires/wheels on them all day, pounding on them with hammers to mount weights, etc, but the shop owner doesn't want to eat a little profit and keep the machines in spec.
I actually had one shop owner ask me why the machine needs recalibrating... it's been running just great since it was installed 4 years ago. Double-

Because of the irregular patterns in the tread (to prevent resonance during operation and enhance water and air movement), it is possible that one side of a tire can lose more rubber during normal wear than the other, causing an imbalance due to wear. It is therefore recommended that you have them balanced at each rotation interval as mentioned above. The nicer the tires, or more performance driving they get, the more important it is to do this too.

 

The shop I used to work at had some really nice equipment, I wan tto say it was Hunter. Anyway, you could used the balancer to find the best possible position for the tire to be mounted on the wheel. you could even find he best tire for each wheel and the best position on that wheel. Sometimes by doing this, there was no need for weight. You could also hid stick on weights behind the wheel spokes and keep them completely hidden.

Pretty neat stuff. Now, after seeing the difference it makes, I buy new tires at a dealership instead of a tire store. I pay the extra to make sure the are forcematched and I demand to see the numbers when they are done with it.

It makes for a better ride and longer tire life.

 

Its not very hard to balance tires. Unless you need it EXACTLY at zero, most machines are designed to round up to .50 oz. MOST people dont really care, thats why people will go 10 years without changing tires, belts, hoses, spark plugs, etc etc. I see it DAILY!! I had a customer today that had a blow out. I looked at the DOT code onthe tire, and it read 141...to thoes who dont know what that means, the tire was produced on the 14th week of 1991.
The comment the customer made, "But it still has tread!"

Road Force balance is nice, but expensive to do exactly what most regular Hunter machines already do.

Buying new tires at a dealership is IMO very silly. Most dealers buy tires from tire stores, and you are forced to pay the mark up on top of the already outragious dealer labor rates.

As for recalibration, it doesnt cost anything. My Hunter machines use a 14 inch wheel and tire of 185/70-14 (or is it 75-14..) and the process takes about 30 seconds. Its done every morning on both machines.