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Should We Balance Bicycle Wheels?

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Old 05-14-12, 08:11 PM
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jyl
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Should We Balance Bicycle Wheels?

I was thinking (dangerous, I know) about my bike shimmy issue. When car tires are installed, they are dynamically balanced. We don't do this for bicycle wheels. Should we? How might this be done?
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Old 05-14-12, 08:30 PM
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Should we balance our lopsided ears?

Should we balance our asymmetrical length legs and arms?

Hell, let's go borderline nasty here...

Should us guys balance a certain part of our private anatomy by wearing a single ear ring in the opposing ear? Afterall, many wrestlers on TV do!

While we're at it, someone look up photos of Lance Armstrong - see what he's got on those ear lobes...

=8-)
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Old 05-14-12, 09:41 PM
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Bike shimmy has nothing to do with wheel-balance. The RPMs a bike-wheel spins at and the amount of weight-imbalance isn't significant enough to cause shimmy problems. One indicator supporting this is the frequency of the shimmy and shake; notice that it's of a higher frequency than the RPM of the wheel. Wheel shake can be caused numerous things:

- loose front and/or wheel-bearings
- out-of-round or laterally un-true wheels
- loose headset
- mis-aligned fork
- mis-aligned/bent frame
- etc.

Here's a good article on wheel-shimmy: Dave Moulton - Shimmy re-visited
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Old 05-14-12, 09:50 PM
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When my car tires are out of balance they cause some shaking when I'm going over about 65 mph but not at lower speeds. I presume having my bike wheels out of balance would also cause vertical shaking above some speed - but since I never go fast enough to experience it I won't worry about it.

Lateral shimmy is a different phenomenon and is not caused by out of balance wheels.
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Old 05-14-12, 09:53 PM
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https://draco.nac.uci.edu/rbfaq/FAQ/8h.5.html
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Old 05-14-12, 10:32 PM
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https://velonews.competitor.com/2012/...nd-more_215372
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