Rich, I too have the same question.
What is lug-centric balancing?
I have heard of static and dynamic balancing, but not lug-centric.
Can you enlighten me?
If you have repro styled steel or Magnum 500 wheels (and possibly other types of
raised center wheels) most tire shops will not be able to properly balance the
wheels for you. The standard wheel balancing system uses a tapered cone that
is threaded onto a spindle and snugged up against the center hole of the
wheel. Then the wheel is spun up to speed.
The problem with this is that some wheels are manufactured such that the
center hole is not perfectly centered with respect to the outer rim of the
wheel. The _lugs_ are correctly centered to the outer rim. So for those
kinds of wheels, the wheel must be mounted by the lugs to the balancing
machine in order to get a correct balance reading.
Why am I excited? Because I've called about 1000 shops looking for
someone with this capability and most places I spoke with didn't
even know what I was talking about.
Good, I eventually just gave up on my Magnum 500s.
I found a shop that said they could balance it anyways, and the tires actually seem fine driving around on the highway.
There's one other way that you could get them balanced, and that's finding a specialty shop that will balance your tires on the car. That was going to be my 2nd option.
I just got my styled steel wheels lug-centric balanced yesterday. Haven't had them up to highway speeds yet. But I will in oh..... about 10 minutes! Hope it worked because they were wobbling bad before.
Better yet --go to the Hunter Industries website and find someone locally that has the Road Force balancer. It is the closest to a factory installation as you can get and they will balance lug-centric as opposed to hub-centric.
There's one other way that you could get them balanced, and that's finding a specialty shop that will balance your tires on the car. That was going to be my 2nd option.
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