best place for tire balancing in central new jersey?

[bahnstormer]

i'm trying to find a place that will do it right
have been going to freedman tire in edison,
but am open to suggestions

[Scott H]

GSP9700 locator (http://www.gsp9700.com)



i'm trying to find a place that will do it right
have been going to freedman tire in edison,
but am open to suggestions

[bahnstormer]

thanks, but its not only the machine
it depends a lot on if they know how
to operate it too....

anyone have real knowledge of shops
in the area?

[Scott H]

that come up in the search to get a feel for the shop. If they spend time with you on the phone to get it right, chances are they will spend time with the machine to get the work right..........and the gsp9700 takes a lot of work out of it for them.......


thanks, but its not only the machine
it depends a lot on if they know how
to operate it too....

anyone have real knowledge of shops
in the area?

[Tiger]

BC Tire at Stelton Road is good. Exit 5 on 287... so southbound 2.5 miles on the right... they are practically in between 287 and Turnpike. Don't know what balancer they have though.

[bahnstormer]

bc tire? i know stelton pretty well, i'll find em and tell em tiger sent
me hehehe =] thanks!

thanks scott for that tip too

[Tiger]

U can check the Nokian tires there too... I was there just two days ago.

[632 Regal]

discount tire here in Michigan has the good hunter machines but the highly tained operator didnt know half of what I did about using that machine. He said there was only one tire that was a little off, 34lbs or whatever and rotated it back to specs, 23. Said anything under 24 was within specs. 2 tires have over 1.5 ounces with one 3.75 off. Needless I have to live with the stupid shimmy above 70mph as they said the cause is my car and not the tires. Specs from the hunter site says any tire over 2/3 oz is defective which means anything over 1/4 oz is defective...if I didnt watch it I wouldnt have believed it. They wouldnt refund my money after I went for a test ride claiming it was my car and everything was within spec...any ideas?

[Tiger]

Idiots... it is their machine. They need to calibrate their machine weekly... Even an uncle of mine who owns a shop didn't know. They never calibrated it and the first two set I balanced weren't good... until I got the owner's manual online... then I calibrated their machine to within spec... now zero shimmy all the way up to 80MPH.

Their machine was an older bottom of the rung Coat 700 wheel balancer with zero whistles... a pain to slap the weight on because the tire still moves... whereas better one will lock in position so you can put the weight on exactly where needed.

[Tiger]

BTW, you can test their machine if they let you near it... Using a balanced tire from that machine... then slap on 4 oz of weight on the inside side of the wheel... Then spin balance it... it should read exactly 4 oz... spec call for within 0.15 oz... anything past that will shimmy. So if it doesn't read between 3.85 and 4.15, it is not calibrated.

Then you have to repeat this procedure two more time... take all the weight off and balance with the newly calibrated machine... and then slap on 4 oz again... and see what the reading again... if it is still off, repeat one more time with calibration procedure...

Last test is to verify how calibrated it is.... again... all weight off again... balance it... then test it with 4 oz.

Remember, the 4 oz should read only on the side where you stacked the weight... so it should read... (4.00 0.00)... not (3.75 0.25)

[632 Regal]

showroom floor and the guy that used it told me that 23 was acceptable, if you read on the hunter site 12 is the limit and so is 1/2 oz of weight. I watched the whole joke and 2 tires were defective but they dont want to deal with it and rather send me on my happy way.

[bahnstormer]

i talked to jake, from freedman and he told me the hunter 9700 only spins up to like 68mph - so what the hell does mercedes and bmw use on the new cars? to certify them up to 155mph?

hunter search showed me that the local MB dealer and the local BMW dealer all had hunter 9700.....

wtf????

[Tiger]

Most machine are specified for about 65MPH ideal balancing. However, that does not mean you can't balance a tire for 155MPH. Most shop use round off method so they have a 0.15 oz variance... it is not a zero balanced tire... so if you use exact balancing and assuming your machine is calibrated to perfection, you can assume great balancing.

One other note, the faster the tire go, it tends to balance itself out assuming you still have a tiny bit off balance.