MG-Cars.net

Welcome to our resource for MG Car Information.

Recommendations

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG MGA - wire whel balancing

Need to replace all tyres and think should have wheels balanced but have read strong advice that ordinary tye fitters cannot do this and should use specialists. Anyone know any in southern England?
H L Davy

HL

Cannot help you. I will be in the same boat as you now I am in the south. The best balancer with a specialist MGA/Healey balancing rig is Bob West, but he is up in Yorkshire. Useless information for you I know, but others up there may benefit.

Steve
Steve Gyles

Steve
Just for my interest, I've seen you say this before and am curious why wire wheels should pose such a problem for balancing. I've had them done many times in the past at various "normal" tyre fitters with no real problems. Surely with the correct cones, or whatever, to accurately hold and spin the wheels it should not be too specialist? I'm not doubting what you say for a minute, maybe things have changed, but I'd love to know, if there is a problem with wire wheels, just what the problem relates to.
Regards
Bruce
Bruce Mayo

Bruce, a lot of tyre shops will mount the wheel on the balancing machine using the rear face of the hub as a reference point in the same why a steel disc wheel is mounted. The problem is that that face isn't necessarily true to the axis of the wheel. The true location needs to be from the inside taper at the rear of the hub and from the flat face of the outside of the hub to properly locate the wheel on the machine. A lot of shops either don't know this or don't have the proper adaptors to mount them in that manner. A good diagram of the mounting can be found in the Victoria British catalogs here in the states as I have copied for you. Print it out and take a copy with you to the tyre store to show them how wires must be mounted to get a proper balance.


Bill Young

Bruce

Bill has said it better than I could. It is,therefore a bit hit or miss if a 'standard' wheel balance operative gets the wheel correctly centred. Bob West has adapted a wheel balancer with the complete MGA splined hub assembly so you get a wheel dynamically balanced perfectly every time exactly as it bolts up on your own splines. Picture of Bob's kit attached.

Steve


Steve Gyles

I balanced mine on the car and they are completely free of any vibration. It's simple, just make sure that your front wheels spin freely when jacked up, back the brakes off if necessary. Spin the wheel, see where it stops and mark the top of the tyre with chalk and repeat until you are happy that you have found the lightest part of the wheel. Fit weight to that part of the wheel (I fit the weights on the inside of the wheel, out of sight) repeat, fitting more or less weight until the wheel will stop anywhere when spun, and that's it. I don't bother with the rear wheels, but I guess you could fit the rear wheels to the front hubs to balance them if you were really keen. I also don't worry about the side to side balance of the wheels, as I figure our wheels are narrow enough for it to make no difference. Maybe I'm missing something here but it works for me, and has got to be worth a try before trying to find a competent wheel balancer.
P.S. I also fit my own tyres using tyre levers, so I don't have to take my MGA wheels anywhere near a tire shop!
Lindsay Sampford

Lindsay

Novel. How do you guess what weight to put on? or is it just trial and error? Is it easy to get hold of a selection of weights? Supplier's name please.

Like you, my wheels are balanced on the inside for the same reasons.

Steve

Steve
Steve Gyles

It was trial-and-error Steve, but it didn't take long. Anyway, it's an excuse to play with the car! The weights were removed from my old 48 spoke wheels, which were loaded with "half-a-hundredweight" of "professionally fitted" weights and about as balanced as a drunk! So my balancing didn't even cost me anything. I just checked eBay and they have both the clip-on and adhesive weights. As trial and error is required, you would need the clip-on type to balance the wheels, but once balanced, they could be subtituted with stick-on ones if desired .
Lindsay Sampford

HL,
Call Motor Wheel Services in Langley (Slough). 01753 549360. Just off the M4. They provided the explanation that used to be in the Moss MGA catalogue (As Steve explained above).
regards
Colin
C Manley

Lindsy, your method sounds fine as long as you don't have too much drag in the bearings or from the brakes to deal with. If you have access to a bubble balancer such as this inexpensive one from Harbor Freight you can use a wire wheel hub similar to the one shown above to make a nice adaptor and bubble balance your wheels at home. Balancing on a bubble balancer allows you to "split" the weight and get a better dyamic balance as well as a good static balance. Split weight balancing is done by splitting the needed weight into two slightly larger weights and spacing them equidistant from the actual "light" spot on the rim. You have to be able to slide them along the rim edge and watch the balance point to get it right on, but it's really easy once you get the hang of it and gives great balance results.


Bill Young

Bill, I did contemplate getting one of those things, (they turn up on eBay), but was so pleased with the result I got without, I decided not to bother. I have drum brakes, so I can wind them back so that there is no drag at all, also I balanced them when the weather was warm, so the grease was nice and thin. Disc brakes, or grease at -4 degrees might be a different matter!
Lindsay Sampford

Great stuff. (Lindsay and Steve also replied on antifreeze). Unfortunately I have disc brakes which I am pretty sure would create too much drag, however that's a lot of interesting suggestions. I think I will have my tyres fitted without weights and see where I go from there.
H L Davy

Take the pads out to reduce the drag!
Art Pearse

HD much of whats said here I agree with but if your wires are in reasonably condition there's a good chance that conventional balancing will be OK. I had no choice but to do this and all worked well with no vibration at all. Wheel balancing is not expensive so I'd just give it a go and see.
J H Cole

I spent around 9 years struggling with this one, I could not get my wheels, particularly the fronts, to balance. The trouble is the tyre guys might correctly use a cone in the 'inside' of the wire wheel but incorrectly use a similar cone inside the rough hole on the 'outside' on the wire wheel. They should locate on the external cone as do our spinners. They don't have these adaptors nowadays.
To sort this I machined the flange off an old rear hub to just leave the splines and the thread. An old spinner was screwed onto this hub and a radiused hole accurately machined in the spinner's face that the balancing machine's cone could locate in.
On the balancing machine this assembly is slid into the wheel, the cone slid in position and tightened up in the normal way.
I had my front tyres only balanced, to see the effect, when I did this a couple of years ago, I haven't been back since. The car was transformed as the wheels had never run true on that balancer before!
You Hampshire chaps are very welcome to borrow my 'adaptor' - I'll take you down to my tyre man and we can get you sorted.
Pete
Pete Tipping

There are no weights on my wire wheels & since owning my A I haven’t had any evidence that I need to balance them....... just lucky or what?

Pete, I discussed this with my local tyre fitter at Denmead whist getting new boots for the wife’s car & he gave me your name. I guess he’s your man. I’ll be in touch if I need to borrow your adaptor......Cheers

Richard
R A Evans

HL
Last year I purchased new wires and Tyres from SC Parts Crawley West Sussex,
e-mailenquiries@scparts.co.uk
Tel 01293 847204 ( MG Line)

They had a large selection of Classic Tyres and balanced them perfectly- also being a large supplier of Wire Wheels I am sure they have the correct equipment. I also have found them very competitive on price for other spares namely 123 ignition
Paul



P D Camp

Richard
Spot on - Denmead it is. There's more "A's" around here than I thought..!
Pete
Pete Tipping

Probably not much use to Hugh (H L Davy) in Middlesex but anyone in the Yorkshire/Notts area should try Longstone Tyres in Bawtry. They specialise in classic/vintage car tyres and have the correct gear for balancing wire wheels. A friend of mine who lives near Derby rates them highly.
S Mumby

This thread was discussed between 03/12/2010 and 20/12/2010

MG MGA index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG MGA BBS is active now.