No wheel and tire assembly is perfectly even. The balancer spins yours, finds the heavy spot, and tells us exactly how much weight to add and where. Most of what we fit is an adhesive stick-on weight, hidden inside the barrel of the wheel. A hammer-on clip weight goes on where the wheel is built for one.
- Every wheel and tire has a heavy spot. The machine measures it, we counter it.
- Most of the weights we fit are stick-on, hidden inside the wheel where you never see them.
- A hammer-on clip weight goes on the rim flange when that is what the wheel takes.
- Balancing is included at no extra charge with every off-rim tire change.
- On its own, balancing a full set starts at $45 on a small car.
Why a wheel needs weight at all
A tire, a rim, and a valve are three separate objects made to a tolerance, and once they are bolted together as one spinning assembly those tolerances add up to a heavy spot. It is small. At parking speed you would never know it was there. At highway speed the same few grams come round a dozen times a second and turn into the shimmy you feel through the steering wheel.
Balancing is simply the answer to that. The wheel goes on the balancer, the machine spins it, and the readout tells us how much weight the assembly is short of even and exactly where around the rim it belongs. We add that much, in that place, and spin it again to confirm.
Stick-on weights, which is most of what we fit
An adhesive weight is a strip that bonds to the inside face of the wheel barrel. We clean the surface first so it has something to hold to, then place it where the readout says. Once the wheel is back on the car it sits behind the spokes and out of sight, and nothing has been clamped onto the visible rim flange to get there.
That is why it is our default. It balances the wheel and it leaves the part of the wheel you actually look at untouched.
Hammer-on weights, where the wheel calls for one
A clip weight hooks over the lip of the rim flange. It is the correct fitting on a steel wheel, and on alloys whose inner barrel gives an adhesive weight nothing clean or flat to bond to. Fitting one where the wheel is designed for it is not a compromise: it is the weight that will still be there next winter.
We take the same care with the finish here that we take on the mounting machine. If you want the detail of how we keep the machine off your rims, that is its own page.
What you should feel afterwards
Nothing. A balanced set is a quiet steering wheel at highway speed, and that is the whole test. If a new vibration turns up later in the season, come and see us: something has usually changed, and it is worth putting the wheel back on the machine to find out what.
Frequently asked
Why do I see weights on the outside of some wheels and not others?
Because the wheel decides. Where there is a clean flat surface inside the barrel, we use an adhesive stick-on weight and it disappears behind the spokes. Where there is not, a clip weight that hooks over the rim flange is the correct fitting, and on a steel wheel it is usually the only one. Neither is a shortcut: the right weight for the wheel is the one that holds.
How much does tire balancing cost?
Balancing on its own starts at $45 for a full set on a small car and is priced by vehicle size and how many wheels, with every tier published on our pricing page. If you are already booking an off-rim tire change, balancing is part of that price and is not an extra.
How often do my wheels need balancing?
Whenever you fit new tires, and roughly every 15,000 to 20,000 km after that. The other trigger is your own steering wheel: a shake that shows up at highway speed and was not there before is the classic sign of a wheel that has lost a weight or picked up an uneven spot.
What happens if a wheel is left out of balance?
More than a shake. An out-of-balance wheel scallops the tread in patches, which shortens the life of the tire, and it works the bearings and suspension on that corner every kilometre you drive. Balancing protects the whole corner, not just the ride.
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