Wheel balancing

Initially we were a little sceptical about the benefits of cycle wheel balancing , but after balancing numerous wheels for some top professional riders, some of our local racing cyclists and also a few other more leisurely cyclists we are convinced of the benefits.

The first and unexpected benefits which was the first thing everybody noticed was the improved acceleration, in addition to this the wheels made the bike much more controllable under braking.

We have also done the odd experiment with regards to speed wobble, we have had a few customers with this problem, so we thought as test for the benefits of the wheel balancing, we would do nothing else other than balance the wheels, on every occasion balancing the wheels eliminated the speed wobble.

Obviously we can’t guarantee wheel balancing will solve all instances of speed wobble but, think of things in this way.
If you have ever had your bike on a work-stand and pedalled the rear wheel round even at moderate speed the rear of the bike starts bouncing up and down, quite violently if unchecked, this is not too much of an issue on the rear wheel as your weight is on the rear wheel, but also the rear wheel is fixed and does not steer, unlike the front wheel. This is a completely different matter as this imbalance can have all sorts of unwanted effects.

On top of this, we are also convinced that there is gain to be had at maximum speed, this would make sense given all the other benefits the balancing gives, we just haven’t had the chance to prove this yet, although we are pretty confident this may be one of the biggest benefits of wheel balancing.

Balancing your wheels needs the wheels to be supplied to us as they going to be ridden, that’s with the tyres, tubes and cassette fitted, in the case of clincher rims the majority of the balancing weight is fitted under the rim tape on the outside of the rim, with usually a very small amount of weight fitted on the inner edge of the rim. The wheels are generally balanced to an accuracy of 0.1g, this is pretty accurate but considering that some of the carbon wheels we have balanced have been in excess of 20g out of balance.

Once balanced we have spun the wheels up to in excess of 40mph and bike has been totally stable.