Know what?
I give up. if YOU'ALL want to take your pride-n-joy full size motorhome to a passenger tire dealer---have at it. I'll stick with those in the know!!
OSHA - technician too close to spinning wheel assembly without an idiot guard. You also had to "have the touch" to operate it correctly - no computer involved.
Those balancers were made by Alemite which was a division of Stewart-Warner. They were called Alemite Electronic Wheel Balancers. Several are for sale on Ebay. The kit included a stanchion with a movable piston. The upper part attached to the lower front suspension arm. The piston had a magnet on it and when it passed an electric coil, it generated enough electricity to fire the strobe light. The tech adjusted the stanchion so that strobe would fire only when the wheel was it lowest point. You got two strobes when you started out (one up and one down). The tire was driven by a 1/2 hp constant speed motor with a steel, grooved friction wheel on the motor's cart. The operator started the motor on the cart and when it got up to speed just jammed the friction wheel into the tire and spun the tire to about 80 mph or the tire started vibrating wildly. The operator just noted where the tire was when the strobe fired and that was where the weight went. It usually took several tries to get it right. You could only balance the front tires, as the rear solid axle and dif on leaf springs was to heavy and inaccurate, thus an extra charge for the rear tires, as they had to be swapped to the front for balancing.
I think that is why modern wheel balancing machines have guards around them. Also the machine only spin the tires to about 20 mph because the machines are so sensitive. Hunter makes a 'Road Force" wheel balancer which works well to identify the weights needed for problem tires.Agree with ACE. OSHA didn't like the spin balancer. We had several wheel weights turn into missiles
Spot on description of the spin balancer Beau
The other issue is the tire, wheel & rotor or in my day drums were all balanced. Then when a guy took his car to get tires rotated at XYZ tire shop the tires could be out of balance as you moved tires balanced on a front rotor to a rear drum. Our experience we had more issues with bias ply tires than the "new" radials they put on the top-of-the-line models.
At the Chrysler/Plymouth garage I worked for we only spun balanced problem child tires on cars that were under warranty. Otherwise, they got the bubble balancer treatment
www.chapelhilltire.com
