It seems like a very small amount of people do this, but maybe I'm wrong?
Is it worth the time balancing your wheel+tire? It seems like an excessive amount of vibration in the video
by Chonkmonkey
It seems like a very small amount of people do this, but maybe I'm wrong?
Is it worth the time balancing your wheel+tire? It seems like an excessive amount of vibration in the video
by Chonkmonkey
18 Comments
If you can feel it while riding the bike at speed then I’d say go for it.
Is the tire fully seated?
It’s usually at a very specific rpm and an rpm you’re almost never at is mostly why. If you’re bored go for it.
That doesn’t look normal. Take a wrench and tap all the spokes. They should emit roughly the same pitch on each respective side. If you hear one out of tune, tighten it or loosen it depending on pitch.
You can buy small wheel balancing plugs that goes inside the spoke holes and balances the wheel.
It’s hardly ever a vibration you can distinguish when you have your weight on the bike and are riding on pavement.
Bicycle wheels are rarely balanced due to them having a valve on one side. Sometimes this is offset by the removal of rim material to create the valve hole, but 95% of bike wheels have this hop when the bike is unweighted.
I’ve seen some guys take a single automotive wheel weight and attach it opposite the valve. That said, the unbalanced nature of the wheel won’t be an issue 90% of the time. The wheel doesn’t weigh enough to have this effect while riding, and unless you’re moving at high speeds it won’t have the momentum to hop like this anyways
Basically if you’re planning to nuke the col de madone and want the smoothest ride possible, maybe worth looking into balancing the wheel. For anything else the value is very limited, and will probably perform marginally worse due to a heavier wheel.
Are they tubeless? Maybe a big sealant slug in there.
Fancy valve sensors?
It definitely looks like there’s a weight offset in there somewhere. Tire defect perhaps.
Does it have the vibration without the tire and tube?
this can also be torque reaction caused by an off-center (radially untrue) wheel, you can see the tire oscilating in and out a little bit (i think?) which might be an indicator.
Bad tire or wheel out of round. Also make sure someone isn’t playing a joke in you and put water in the tube.
I’ve had alloy rims have a bit of hop due to the welded seam from the rim construction couldn’t get it perfectly trued with no hop because of that. A small variation in the weight of the rim can cause this with any wheel.
Ive tried it and found it to be more effort than its worth.
I stopped the wheel. Then let it slowly rotate on it own until the heavy point was down. But it didnt go all the way down on its own, so I manually positioned it to rotate in the other direction and split the difference. This got it pretty close to finding the heavy spot. It was not aligned with the valve hole.
So then I tried a few things: I didnt want to add weight, so I rotated the tire 180 degrees trying to get the heavy side of the tire opposite the heavy side of the rim. This helped, but was impossibly time consuming. I had to inflate check the balance. Deflate and unseat the tire. Rotate tire. Inflate. Check to see where the heavy spot moved to. Then repeat. And my end result sucked.
My best result was using weighted tape I had left over from weighting tennis racket heads. Same process to find the heavy spot. Then add the weighted tape with making tape to preserve the adhesive backing. Move it around to tune it. Then when its balances, remove the backing and stick the weighted tape down.
I noticed absolutely zero changes to riding. And added weight to my wheel.
I’ve had one pair of factory balanced wheels before (I think as they had counterweight looking thing opposite the valve hole). They were campagnolo or maybe it was the Corima set. They rode very smooth, the campy ones were the nicest feeling I’ve owned, but I think it was more the hubs and general construction rather than the balance. However couldn’t be sure either way. I’ve never bothered for any of my other wheelsets.
Set tire psi..get on the bike and go ride.
Bike wheels are not balanced. They will hop and skip and the tires are often out of true,
If you have descents with fairly smooth roads, you will notice the before and after difference with balancing. If roads are a little rough it will probably not make a real difference feeling wise. On the flats, I doubt you will be able to tell unless you are going really fast or your wheels are really bad.
Have you slimed? That stuff can dry up on you after time and stick
Just changed my tires recently. I am old and have done this many many times. I thought I did everything correctly, but had a wobble/ vibrations similar to yours. Deflated completely, re-filled slowly, massaging the tire around the rim every 5 PSI or so. re-installed and it’s super smooth now with almost no deflections or vibration.