| Oldad | -- 06-16-2012 @ 11:17 AM |
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I recently bought a 1937 Ford with age rotted tires. I have replaced the tires but due to the large bolt circle local tire dealers cannot spin balance them on their machines. Any suggestions on wheel balancing?
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| Stroker | -- 06-16-2012 @ 1:02 PM |
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Those of us with 36-39 Fords share your pain. There are available wheel adapters from Speedway Motors that are intended to allow you to mount wide-fives to earlier/later drums, These will work on a spin balancer. You can knock out the bearing races in a front drum and use that, or if you are near a truck shop, they often have the equipment to spin the front wheels while on the vehicle. Of course you will have to move the rears to the front to balance all four. At one time, there was a source in the V8 Times for an adapter, but I haven't seen it advertised for quite a while. I do my own, with an ancient spin balancer that is so old it came with a wide-five plate. It's a problem, but there are solutions.
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| Oldad | -- 06-16-2012 @ 1:07 PM |
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Thanks Stroker!
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| kubes40 | -- 06-16-2012 @ 4:22 PM |
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Stroker has advised you well. I might add - often times a member of your local club will have one of these plates to lend. I will also caution that the new plates being offered by C&G, etc. are nice but NOT themselves balanced. If this plate is even a few grams out of balance you will of course not be able to properly balance your tires / wheels. If you purchase a new plate, I strongly suggest you have it balanced at your local machine shop. An easy and reasonable job.
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| doning | -- 06-17-2012 @ 2:02 PM |
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I just had the wheels balanced on my 37 Ford the other day. I bought a wide five balancer plate from Dick Spadaro. $70.00 and excellent quality!
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| kubes40 | -- 06-18-2012 @ 5:49 AM |
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Doning, Was the plate from Dick balanced?
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| doning | -- 06-18-2012 @ 9:07 AM |
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No, they do not come balanced when you buy them but my mechanic put the plate on the spin balancer and was amazed how true it was.
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| supereal | -- 06-18-2012 @ 9:07 AM |
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Another important consideration when mounting and balancing new tires is the runout of the rim/wheel. A good many old wheels have considerable wobble that will negate even the best balancing. This problem is not uncommon with new tires. We have had some problems with out-of-round new tires, as well. This usually presents itself as shimmy and wheel "hop" that may not have been noticed before.
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| Gary M. | -- 06-18-2012 @ 6:12 PM |
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I bought my wheel plate from Alpine Performance Machine Shop. Because its a machine shop I would think that it comes balanced but Im not sure. You can email them at amp10@sbcglobal.net
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| Gary M. | -- 06-18-2012 @ 6:18 PM |
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I forgot to add that you should carry the wheel plate with you when you travel incase you get a flat. Modern machinery cant dismount our wheels without the plate.
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