Wheel Balance issue solution

[NOT A TA]

Thanks for posting this Greg.

I recently had a tire go bad on track at Sebring late in the day on a Saturday and bought 2 new front tires at a local tire shop on a Sunday morning. Not the tires I would have bought by choice but early on a Sunday morning to find any kind of high performance tires in a 275 40 17 was lucky. They were fine all day, trailered the car home and put it in the garage.

I then put some new racing brake pads on the car, bedded them on the local streets and then a few days later drove the car about an hour to the Palm Beach International track. The brake pads worked very well! Much better than any I've tried so far. I kept going deeper and deeper at the end of the straights before hitting the brakes and hitting the brakes harder and harder.

About half way through the day thought I sensed a very slight vibration in the front only at the highest speed section of the track where I was hitting about 110 MPH. Checked everything over in the pits and everything seemed tight and fine. Then during the last hot lap of my last session I hit a little higher speed there and decided there was a small vibration from something for sure. Checked everything in the pits again with nothing out of the ordinary. Then had an uneventfull ride home at highway speeds with no vibration.

I figured I'd double check everything in the front and have the balancing of the front tires checked this week before I run up at Sebring again next weekend.

Now I read this! I've had drag cars with tire screws in the slicks but never really considered braking hard enough to cause tire slip on the wheel. That may very well have been what happened to my car. I'll bet the local tire shop figured they'd lube up my wheels and the new tires "really good" so they wouldn't mark up my wheels. Then with the much higher braking force of the new pads and practicing trail braking into turn 1, one (or both) tires may have slipped just a little bit on the rim.

After I get the tires rebalanced (if they need it) I'm going to mark all the tires before I run the car at Sebring and see if any of them move.

[GregWeld]

Interesting huh John!!

I'd never ever given any thought to the tire moving on the rim... except as you said - in drag racing and then only the slicks!

Big 4 X 4's have "rim lock" wheels.... They run low air pressures... so I could see where they might spin a tire like this... but sure never thought about it on "high performance" tires like we use.

Thought I'd post it up - and let people read it or not. I claim no merit on the article - only that it seemed to be informative and something to "think" about.

Will be interesting to see if you mark the tire/wheel if they "move" at all...