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In Home Wheel Balancing – the Ultimate Tesla Accessory for the Have Everything Do-It-Yourselfer?

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I know this might sound kinda nuts on first pass (and I had my doubts about this initially being a good idea) but here's the basic pitch – and these considerations might help you to decide whether or not this is something you'd be interested in . . . . or not:

1) if you have two cars (or more!), and you get the wheels balanced an average once a year, you are spending probably multiple hours sitting in the waiting area of exciting places like Tire Kingdom, NTB Tire, Discount Tire, Costco, etc., wondering if the staff is doing a good job or not. Not infrequently, in my experience anyway, the balancing has to be redone, at least once in a while, adding to the frustration and massive time-wasting. Additionally, dynamic wheel balancing is not cheap typically around $20 a wheel (more for so called ‘lifetime balancing’ which few outfits still offer). Between the lost time (sitting in these exciting places with other bored and/or anxious customers) and the cost, a dynamic wheel balancer can pay for itself in just a few years, particularly if you value your time, as most of us do. If you ‘go in’ with let's say just 4-5 other people in your area, it would cost only $200-250/family group for many years of wheel balancing. After costing out my time sitting and waiting in these big commercial shops, I realized that I would save the purchase cost of this in just 3 years, even without splitting the investment with any other owners.

2) The other advantage is that with proper calibration of one of these machines, if you have even modest technical skills, you are more likely to get a 'spot-on' balance than going to one of those big commercial tire places – at least in my personal experience with having done 45+ years of paying for somebody else to balance the wheels on my car. And those big commercial places often use a version of this machine, or a more expensive version that is operationally very similar. My wife is no version of any kind of car nut (unlike her husband) – and yet she can tell the difference immediately in terms of how smooth the car is on the highway after my rebalancing all 4 wheels – and in her case this was after paying for two trials of balancing at big auto care centers. Vibration, noise and harshness are primary variables in promotion of driving fatigue on long distance trips, so you get real benefit, esp. on trips. I'm sure all the do-it-yourselfers would endorse that doing the job yourself means you know that it was done properly – and spot on balance (and detecting significant runout) is particularly critical if you're tracking your Tesla, where you're regularly exceeding 100 miles an hour. So the dividends are multiple (long term cost, grief and time wasting reductions, quality of results), even if you're not tracking your car, but especially if you are.

3) it's actually very easy to run one of these machines, and the machines are vectoring towards $1000 with steady-to-declining prices, despite problems with supply chains. I was surprised how easy it was (despite some obfuscation and poor English in the documents) to calibrate the machine and get the balance spot on. Within only a half an hour or so, I was confident that I was getting good results.

3) An additional advantage is that once the wheel and tire are mounted, you can see very quickly whether or not you need wheel straightening from your last encounter of a pothole (or curb) kind! Additionally, relatively minor rim bends can benefit from re-balancing (with reduction in vibration), while some (typically anything > 3-4mm) mean you have to bit the bullet, dismount the tire, and pay to have the wheel straightened and the tire remounted. But once again, you still save (money and grief) at the other end on balancing.

4) if you have multiple contacts in the local area who are also 'car nuts'/gearheads and who are willing to split the cost, the potential payback period becomes even shorter. With eight ‘subscriptions’ (@$150/a piece for say 5 years of unlimited balancing) the payback period is immediate – you recover your investment right away and you and folks subscribing to using your machine reduce cost and grief from there.

5) the machines are fairly compact and don't take up that much space particularly if you have an extra bay in your garage. But even if you don't.

6) a quick introduction including tips on calibrating the machines, basic review of the common layout for the operating systems of these dynamic balancing machines will quickly make it clear that these are not difficult pieces of hardware to operate. Indeed far and away the hardest issue (where the only real safety and liability issues sit) is jacking the car up and getting the wheel off and back on safely.


Another option would be to have a small group demonstration for folks in my area (SW FL) – I could accommodate at most 12-15 people to do the teaching and demonstrating – I’m in Punta Gorda. If there is enough interest I'd be happy to provide pizza and other refreshments. Bigger crowds might be hard to accommodate in my garage (which not surprisingly is full of car gear, extra wheels and tires, etc.), and makes hands-on teaching more difficult. Parking is also a potential limitation. But in any case please leave comments if in Southwest Florida and you're interested in a group demonstration.

Ratings:

Overall I give this machine, which I purchased on Amazon, 4.5/5 stars. It's a homerun on the value equation, and the overall accuracy of wheeling balancing is also very high and I believe this mitigates significantly some minor issues but as always . . . caveat emptor.

Value: 5/5 – for the money and considering what you get, it's really a great value overall.

Merchant Seller: 4/5 – some concerns from feedback on Amazon raising at least raise the possibility of questionable sales practices but these are 3rd party reports of course. Also, they were responsive to my questions and they sent me a PDF of the manual which I was then able to print out – as the included printout is frankly of poor quality.

Documentation: 4/5 – clearly not written by a native English speaker (what else is new these days) and I have to believe that the requirement of a steel wheel to do calibration is unnecessary – in a update to this review, I will test recalibration with a larger alloy wheel and post results.

Accuracy of Wheel Balance: 5/5. Capable balancing within a few grams.

Ease of Calibration: 3.5/5 – cumbersome and counterintuitive that you are required to work with a steel wheel with a mounted tire. I was able to calibrate more than adequately just with the steel wheel without a tire being mounted. Not entirely clear that the calibration routine has been well thought out or that even that the description of it in the documentation is entirely functionally accurate.

Quality of accessories : 3/5 – does not include calibration wheel

Durability: open question, given the Florida humidity and the warnings about no higher than 80% humidity. No real data.

Mayflower 800.jpg
 
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Here is the closest to my machine that I could find in the current listings. There are a bunch of these things on the website with either 680 or 800 in the name, probably all Chinese. My assumption is the 800 is the newer machine or perhaps has additional capacities or features.

 
What a terrific idea. I only wish I had space in my garage for one of these machines. I would be totally into it.
You see, I have had this issue of an 'out of round' noise from the rear axle. It sounds and feels like it is the rear driver's side. This has been since day one, now two years ago Dec. 11th, with this Model X.
I recently had it in the service center for another issue and the mechanic asked me if I had any other concerns. 'Why yes, I do. Let's take a test drive and see what you think', I said. He could hear and feel it at 20mph it starts and goes on up to around 45mph when you don't. Smooth roads, rough, it doesn't matter although rougher roads make for harder to hear of course.
So, what I'm getting at is I had an appointment for this coming Monday, 12/19, to get the front axles replaced. Yes, the mechanic said he thought the front axles needed replacing from what he could hear. I agreed to this only to see if it would make any difference in the 'out of round noise' I'm hearing.
Now, this morning, Friday, 12/16, I thought, I better message the service team and ask if the parts are in stock. Well, no surprise. I get a message back saying they will be ordering the parts with a follow up message saying the appointment is now January 9th. Of course that could change too.
So, I've learned something about not wasting my time and not letting others wasted yours either.
Sorry, got off track but I would love to get one of these machines somehow, somewhere. The mechanic did mention that maybe the tires needed rebalancing. Maybe. Should I pay now to have them all checked? What would you do?
 
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If you're ever in my area In Punta Gorda spin by and I'll give your wheels a complimentary balance. Did he confirm that in fact you don't have bent wheels? That's the most common explanation for serious levels of vibration at speed. You shouldn't have more than 3-4 mm run out in any wheel, ideally 1 to 2 mm if you want the best possible ride. I can't fix that Issue, but I sure can see it right off the bat when I put the wheel on the machine. We have an excellent wheel straightening guy down here at gulf coast wheel repair. He took a bunch of our bent wheels (mildly bent 4 to 7 mm several of them with 2 impact zones) and trued them to spot-on with no run out. 100 bucks a wheel which is a pretty good deal frankly. Not sure why you would need front axles being replaced unless the axle shafts are bent. In any case if you have this documented as existing since you got the car this all should be a warranty repair.

If you have the garage space, and you're reasonably handy. I would definitely get one given that you've got 2 cars.
 
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If you are A DIYer and like things like this, then go for it! Otherwise this makes no sense.

Discount Tire charges $10/tire to balance. Then with your free rotations you also get free rebalancing. You make an appointment with them and they will get you in an out in one-hour.
 
If you are A DIYer and like things like this, then go for it! Otherwise this makes no sense.

Discount Tire charges $10/tire to balance. Then with your free rotations you also get free rebalancing. You make an appointment with them and they will get you in an out in one-hour.
That is a very good deal and cheaper than most anybody else. So if you don't have discount tire of course these numbers don't apply. We pay $15 for a Dynamic balance. And you're not including the cost of your time of course. Most people spend an average of at least an hour waiting for wheel balancing even with an appointment and that does not include your driving time so the amount of time people donate to this process should be added to the overall cost. If you actually include those numbers you get a very different economic picture from what you're suggesting.
 
That is a very good deal and cheaper than most anybody else. So if you don't have discount tire of course these numbers don't apply. We pay $15 for a Dynamic balance. And you're not including the cost of your time of course. Most people spend an average of at least an hour waiting for wheel balancing even with an appointment and that does not include your driving time so the amount of time people donate to this process should be added to the overall cost. If you actually include those numbers you get a very different economic picture from what you're suggesting.

Yes, you can add the value of your time, but one must ensure realistic numbers are used. And if you DIY it, then you have to consider your time invested as well. Also, all machines need maintenance and repair, so that should factored in as well.
 
Yes, you can add the value of your time, but one must ensure realistic numbers are used. And if you DIY it, then you have to consider your time invested as well. Also, all machines need maintenance and repair, so that should factored in as well.
Let's see. . . it takes me 5 minutes to take a wheel off, balance it and put it back on. That's 20 minutes per car. That contrasts with the 20 minutes driving to and from, the one hour waiting in the show room at least, then returning because oftentimes they don't do it right the 1st time, so that's 20 minutes versus ~2 hours or 3 1/2 hours if I have to return. Cost that out over just 3 years and you're talking 6-10 hours of my time wasted over doing it myself, which actually at my current forensic consultation hourly rate buys 1-2 of these machines. As for maintenance and repair, there is a one to two minute calibration routine. We won't even consider that as a meaningful cost. But yes the machine might break and you might have to get service. Welcome to technology.
 
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Let's see. . . it takes me 5 minutes to take a wheel off, balance it and put it back on. That's 20 minutes per car. That contrasts with the 20 minutes driving to and from, the one hour waiting in the show room at least, then returning because oftentimes they don't do it right the 1st time, so that's 20 minutes versus ~2 hours or 3 1/2 hours if I have to return. Cost that out over just 3 years and you're talking 6-10 hours of my time wasted over doing it myself, which actually at my current forensic consultation hourly rate buys 1-2 of these machines. As for maintenance and repair, there is a one to two minute calibration routine. We won't even consider that as a meaningful cost. But yes the machine might break and you might have to get service. Welcome to technology.

LOL, I don’t why you are trying to justify this, a lot of the assumptions are the shop is slow and does not get it right, in which cause you need to find a better shop! It is a fun idea and a definate DIY project, but I serious doubt the ecomonics really work out. Also, if you do this work for anyone else you better get liability insurance.

My advice it do it for the joy and forget the money angle.
 
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LOL, I don’t why you are trying to justify this, a lot of the assumptions are the shop is slow and does not get it right, in which cause you need to find a better shop! It is a fun idea and a definate DIY project, but I serious doubt the ecomonics really work out. Also, if you do this work for anyone else you better get liability insurance.

My advice it do it for the joy and forget the money angle.
LOL. I think you're really misinterpreting what I'm saying. Clearly it doesn't work for you. That's great. Let's move on.
 
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This is honestly such a great idea. And to top it all off you already bought it and set everything up for folks to potentially be subscribers to it. And to bolster your point on the big box stores not doing a perfect balance, this is true as for the most part they are trying to get through cars as fast as they can and that comes at a cost; accuracy and precision.

If i was on the SW side I'd take you up on this. I'm on the SE side though.
 
I know this might sound kinda nuts on first pass (and I had my doubts about this initially being a good idea) but here's the basic pitch – and these considerations might help you to decide whether or not this is something you'd be interested in . . . . or not:

1) if you have two cars (or more!), and you get the wheels balanced an average once a year, you are spending probably multiple hours sitting in the waiting area of exciting places like Tire Kingdom, NTB Tire, Discount Tire, Costco, etc., wondering if the staff is doing a good job or not. Not infrequently, in my experience anyway, the balancing has to be redone, at least once in a while, adding to the frustration and massive time-wasting. Additionally, dynamic wheel balancing is not cheap typically around $20 a wheel (more for so called ‘lifetime balancing’ which few outfits still offer). Between the lost time (sitting in these exciting places with other bored and/or anxious customers) and the cost, a dynamic wheel balancer can pay for itself in just a few years, particularly if you value your time, as most of us do. If you ‘go in’ with let's say just 4-5 other people in your area, it would cost only $200-250/family group for many years of wheel balancing. After costing out my time sitting and waiting in these big commercial shops, I realized that I would save the purchase cost of this in just 3 years, even without splitting the investment with any other owners.

2) The other advantage is that with proper calibration of one of these machines, if you have even modest technical skills, you are more likely to get a 'spot-on' balance than going to one of those big commercial tire places – at least in my personal experience with having done 45+ years of paying for somebody else to balance the wheels on my car. And those big commercial places often use a version of this machine, or a more expensive version that is operationally very similar. My wife is no version of any kind of car nut (unlike her husband) – and yet she can tell the difference immediately in terms of how smooth the car is on the highway after my rebalancing all 4 wheels – and in her case this was after paying for two trials of balancing at big auto care centers. Vibration, noise and harshness are primary variables in promotion of driving fatigue on long distance trips, so you get real benefit, esp. on trips. I'm sure all the do-it-yourselfers would endorse that doing the job yourself means you know that it was done properly – and spot on balance (and detecting significant runout) is particularly critical if you're tracking your Tesla, where you're regularly exceeding 100 miles an hour. So the dividends are multiple (long term cost, grief and time wasting reductions, quality of results), even if you're not tracking your car, but especially if you are.

3) it's actually very easy to run one of these machines, and the machines are vectoring towards $1000 with steady-to-declining prices, despite problems with supply chains. I was surprised how easy it was (despite some obfuscation and poor English in the documents) to calibrate the machine and get the balance spot on. Within only a half an hour or so, I was confident that I was getting good results.

3) An additional advantage is that once the wheel and tire are mounted, you can see very quickly whether or not you need wheel straightening from your last encounter of a pothole (or curb) kind! Additionally, relatively minor rim bends can benefit from re-balancing (with reduction in vibration), while some (typically anything > 3-4mm) mean you have to bit the bullet, dismount the tire, and pay to have the wheel straightened and the tire remounted. But once again, you still save (money and grief) at the other end on balancing.

4) if you have multiple contacts in the local area who are also 'car nuts'/gearheads and who are willing to split the cost, the potential payback period becomes even shorter. With eight ‘subscriptions’ (@$150/a piece for say 5 years of unlimited balancing) the payback period is immediate – you recover your investment right away and you and folks subscribing to using your machine reduce cost and grief from there.

5) the machines are fairly compact and don't take up that much space particularly if you have an extra bay in your garage. But even if you don't.

6) a quick introduction including tips on calibrating the machines, basic review of the common layout for the operating systems of these dynamic balancing machines will quickly make it clear that these are not difficult pieces of hardware to operate. Indeed far and away the hardest issue (where the only real safety and liability issues sit) is jacking the car up and getting the wheel off and back on safely.


Another option would be to have a small group demonstration for folks in my area (SW FL) – I could accommodate at most 12-15 people to do the teaching and demonstrating – I’m in Punta Gorda. If there is enough interest I'd be happy to provide pizza and other refreshments. Bigger crowds might be hard to accommodate in my garage (which not surprisingly is full of car gear, extra wheels and tires, etc.), and makes hands-on teaching more difficult. Parking is also a potential limitation. But in any case please leave comments if in Southwest Florida and you're interested in a group demonstration.

Ratings:

Overall I give this machine, which I purchased on Amazon, 4.5/5 stars. It's a homerun on the value equation, and the overall accuracy of wheeling balancing is also very high and I believe this mitigates significantly some minor issues but as always . . . caveat emptor.

Value: 5/5 – for the money and considering what you get, it's really a great value overall.

Merchant Seller: 4/5 – some concerns from feedback on Amazon raising at least raise the possibility of questionable sales practices but these are 3rd party reports of course. Also, they were responsive to my questions and they sent me a PDF of the manual which I was then able to print out – as the included printout is frankly of poor quality.

Documentation: 4/5 – clearly not written by a native English speaker (what else is new these days) and I have to believe that the requirement of a steel wheel to do calibration is unnecessary – in a update to this review, I will test recalibration with a larger alloy wheel and post results.

Accuracy of Wheel Balance: 5/5. Capable balancing within a few grams.

Ease of Calibration: 3.5/5 – cumbersome and counterintuitive that you are required to work with a steel wheel with a mounted tire. I was able to calibrate more than adequately just with the steel wheel without a tire being mounted. Not entirely clear that the calibration routine has been well thought out or that even that the description of it in the documentation is entirely functionally accurate.

Quality of accessories : 3/5 – does not include calibration wheel

Durability: open question, given the Florida humidity and the warnings about no higher than 80% humidity. No real data.

View attachment 884293
Put a dehumidifier in your garage and run the hose outside for 24-7 bone dry garage (except for when it’s open but overall it’ll be much better for your equipment).
 
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This is honestly such a great idea. And to top it all off you already bought it and set everything up for folks to potentially be subscribers to it. And to bolster your point on the big box stores not doing a perfect balance, this is true as for the most part they are trying to get through cars as fast as they can and that comes at a cost; accuracy and precision.

If i was on the SW side I'd take you up on this. I'm on the SE side though.
If you're ever on the southwest side look me up. Happy to spin up your wheels.
 
Caveat emptor, not all dehumidifiers have hose attachments. This is what I use FWIW.
Thanks for thinking of that and sending that info along! We've got one on order that has a hose and that's rated for 2000 ft.² humidity in Florida is industrial strength for sure so the garage will cut that number in half. But thanks again for a great idea!
 
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Thinking of posting a short tutorial on Do-It-Yourself Wheel Alignment – mostly about toe because camber is little bit trickier. The biggest problem with doing that toe alignment yourself is discriminating between total toe versus asymmetric toe side to side.

And although tutorials like the excellent one by MPP have emphasized that (sometimes!) you can judge that by whether or not your car tracks straight down the road, that is only reliable if you have a road without any crown and that is hard to find.

I realized there was a simple solution to this problem – elegant in fact – that allows you to determine asymmetry of toe side to side and not just total toe-in or toe-out. Pretty pleased with my results. You only need the usual toe in alignment plates, and one other tool – in this case a laser pointer. Will post in this thread later today or tomorrow. Given that most folks are replacing their tires early due to toe in problems, this can save a lot of money especially if you're running expensive Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, or virtually any tire with 20 inch wheels.
 
@dfwatt I'm a former mechanic and thought about getting a wheel balance machine like the one you showed. I've used those in different variations over the years. They are big so you'd need a decent amount of space to put it, I've almost never had to rebalance wheels on a regular basis on my cars so I'd be second guessing on spending money on one unless I'd be doing regular tire mounting with balancing and getting paid for it at least a few times a day in a week. I've thought about getting those old style bubble balancers instead, it doesn't take up much space and a fraction of the cost.