Has anyone successfully corrected a speed wobble by balancing their wheels with tires ‘on’?

Found this article interesting by Hambini.

Lead tape looks like the easiest to use, but not the most esthetically pleasing.

I know my wheels are well out of balance with sealant sloshing around inside the tires, which I can easily feel when spinning the wheels up on the stand. But I don’t notice it in the slightest riding out on the road. No speed wobbles ever. I think wheel balancing is a very long shot for your wobble issue. Hardly anyone balances bike wheels.

I honestly can't say I've ever had speed wobble on a bicycle before. I'm certain none of my wheels are in good balance because I've never thought about balancing them but it's because the amount of weight and speeds they rotate at just don't seem to have any real world significance, at least in my own experience. That being said, it would be interesting to go on a ride on one of my road bikes, something with steep downhills to really get up to speed, balance the wheels, then go hit the same ride again at the same pace and see if I notice changes of any sort.
In the world of motorcycles, you can get weights that clamp around the spokes of spoked dirt bike wheels (or older motorcycles with spoked wheels). Those are generally pretty meaty and putting just one on a bicycle wheel will probably throw it way out of balance but the point being attaching something to a spoke would be less obvious. Maybe something a bit more light duty like using safety wire pliers to twist a section of safety wire on and folding it up to be in line with the spoke. It'd be easy to cut it long and cut it down to length until it's just right.

A note on speed wobbles, I have encountered it before on motorcycles many times and it's usually the steering head/headset bearings having dried out old grease, the races being indexed from riding in a straight line, rust and any combination of those. It's not exactly a direct comparison but both machines operate under generally similar principles so figured I'd throw that thought out there. I have seen older headsets be indexed in the same way as motorcycle headset bearings so it's entirely possible to cause a similar speed wobble in bicycles.

Cough, cough, bulls***t cough cough.

Hambini has a "dazzle us with science" thing going on. A lot of very smart people have been trying to figure out wobble for decades and there doesn't appear to be any awesome answer. And plenty of people have gone over 50mph on unbalanced wheels without wobble.


Bicycle wheels have so little mass you that you get them spinning at 40mph in the stand and stop them by just grabbing the tire.

Exactly! Same goes for all the BS about the [greatly exaggerated] importance of wheel rotational inertia.

I've done battle with wobbles for years. No answer, for me balancing wheels did nothing. While there once may have been a mechanical cause, I think it's now 90% mental. Combine a rough road feel in my hands (eg chip seal) with the right visual (wide open road), and bang. Under the right conditions I could be going 15 mph & not feel stable. Can do 30mph on a flat or slightly down hill wide open road w/o issue. Have not tried hypnosis or a shrink

The fix for me is avoiding certain roads, that has completely corrected wobbles.

Mine is not exceeding 43 MPH.

I've only had instance of a wobble at a specific bridge, and I chocked it up to just that specific bridge. Once they rebuilt it and repoured the concrete, it never happened again.

Speed wobble is a resonance of the system - bike and rider combined. For me, if I am tense in the arms on my Cervelo R5, it can wobble while descending at some speeds and wind conditions. I think the bars and fork are not stiff enough for me. If I relax, wobble does not happen and I can stop the wobble by putting my leg against the top tube. My Specialized SL 8 does not wobble at any speed.

The hambini.com website sells "racing" bottom brackets ranging from $200 to $400 (converted from GBP). That's hilarious.

They claim 20w losses from a 20 gram out of balance wheel, at racing speeds. Ha, sure.

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With my bike seatpost clamped on my workstand, cranking the rear wheel will show it's out of balance wobble, since the bike is free to twist while hanging in the air. The only time I ever felt this was on a freshly paved, glass smooth downhill. I could barely detect a small vibration, synced with the wheels rpm. Otherwise it's lost in the usual road surface vibrations.
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Using a "death grip" on the bars with arms locked can sometimes be the cause of a high speed wobble. Years ago, I was nervous and doing the death grip on a downhill with strong gusty winds, and a sudden gust triggered a strong speed wobble. That bike never did it before or since.

Check all alignments including front tire, head set play, and setting, ets.

I posted a reply to this thread, but it is not showing here. Looking to participate and to accomplish 10 posts so that I can upload photos to the forum. Am I doing something wrong?

Caruso

Welcome to the forum. I can't think of why your post didn't show other than maybe you exceeded the 5 post a day limit and didn't notice the error message when you tried to post. Sorry about the limitations, spammers pretty much forced us into limiting new users like that. One more post and you will be free.

My understanding is that all 2 wheeled vehicles have a critical velocity where shimmy can happen, it's just that the good ones shimmy at a speed so high that is never achieved. The '80s racing bike I rode for years would shimmy at about 40mph. It's weight dependent though, many bikes will shimmy if the rider moves their weight back. And that bike didn't always shimmy at the critical speed either, there are a lot of factors involved. I have another bike that has a shimmy problem that is rider related. I have resolved to never eat ice cream at the top of a mountain with that bike, I have gotten into serious shimmy when I shivered on that bike.

Agree, In my case the resonance appears to be primarily rider side of the system. Relaxing doesn't have an impact. I've even tried the opposite, intentionally death gripping the bars. Knee on top tube dampens the amplitude but doesn't stop the oscillation. Spent a lot of time trying to sort it and ruling out all of the mechanical issues that come up in every single discussion of speed wobble.

Some things that have helped but not fixed. A front end on the stiff side (Felt FR1 best out of my current frames), narrower bars, stem shorter than I used to run, wider tires/rims at as low a pressure as I can run. All impacting frequency/amplitude in my hands. My head position descending seems to have an impact (up being better, mothballed the TT bike). Tried a wide range of my CG relative to the bikes, no impact.

My conclusion, after 40 years of riding w/o followed by 8 years battling this issue, is that it's the bicycle version of the yips putting more than it's a mechanical or fit issue. Anticipation that it's going to happen has become so ingrained that it's always going to be around. Decided rather than just packing it in to stick to solo rides (no racing, no groups) so I can pick the route, stay away from where the issue occurs, and not endanger others.

For what it's worth, a wobble at highway speeds only in a four-wheel vehicle is an indication of an unbalanced wheel (lost wheel weight, perhaps).

My belief, as above, is a complex combination of many factors, as many noted.
It never seems to happen on shallow declines or flats, it happens when resonances are high and when on descents, usually some point beyond 40 ish mph (65 kph) and descending at over 5% +.
It most often manifests in defined velocity ranges.
It is more common on bikes with steeper headtube angles, shorter trails.
I believe a major contributing factor is the designed trail of the front end, as relates to steep head angles and trail.
The geometry and trail changes slightly as declines become more than 5% deg. at which speed wobble will manifest, for which a reduction in 'realized trail' also happens (relative to the vector of gravity).
I have no proof of this ... other than the very common manifestation of it for so many riders.
This on a bicycle, not a motorized vehicle, like a motorcycle.
This can manifest for anyone, if they were to descend on my custom Limongi, at 42ish + mph... Great bike for Crits, and sprints at over 40 mph.... but don;t ever take it over 42 on any descent of -5 deg or greater....
Ride On
Yuri

My first TiCycles has the wobbles. It has steep head and seat tubes, longish top tube, 12 cm stem and short chainstays. (A combination that makes for world class downhill handling under this long skinny body and a mindset to pull forward when the going gets hairy. My Fuji Pro had similar characteristics - minus the speed wobbles - and I loved it. It was just perfect under me leading a race down Smugglers Notch in the rain. Another possible factor for the TiCycles is that the builder used a lightish tube for the top tube; knowing the bike was plenty stiff for this rider (we'd ridden together). I talked to the builder about it a year ago and he said that we'd done just about everything wrong in the design of that bike!

When I got the bike at my age of 55, speed wobble simply didn't happen and I had no clue it could be there. On one of its first rides I did a local, very steep and fast descent with a very strong quartering tailwind. One of my fastest rides ever. Now I'm in my 70s, no longer have either the old strength or confidence and over 40 gets seriously scary. Same hills only other bikes are no issue at all.

I'm debating what to do. I love that bike. It is my all day, any road bike. Not especially light but it fits and feels so good it climbs like an angel. To have to ride the brakes coming home from the places that bike loves to go simply sucks.

sell it and start over...
or, ignore and just continue on merrily...
Ride On
Yuri