Don’t let anybody put knock on weights on the outside of your alloy wheel

All new tyres need to be balanced when fitted to your wheel, they might look perfectly round but slight irregularities inside the tyre (as a by product of how they are made) means that the tyre weight is not even.

The manufactures know this and mark the tyre with a yellow dot, this should be aligned with the valve stem so as to minimise the number of balance weights that are required.

For alloy wheels there are 2 types of balance weight. The first is stick on weights and these are stuck inside your wheel to balance it.

The second (and the one I am talking about here) are knock on weights. These are hammered onto the rim of your wheel, now if you have steel wheels this is ok because the amount of damage caused to a steel wheel is minimal and the wheel trim will cover them up. On an alloy wheel the paint/lacquer on the outside of your wheel can easily be damaged by the knock-on weight being hammered on, this can then allow salt and water through causing the alloy to corrode, and also it looks horrible. If you want to see how horrible they look see a new mini, for some reason they use knock on weights from the factory.

Alloy wheels should always be balanced with stick on weights that are placed on the inside part of the wheel.

So for a quality job call Hometyre on 0800 783 93 10