mal_TX

Anyone remove the stupid blue dots from the 19" wheels?

What did you use? I plan to use claybar but if anyone had a better idea I'd love to skip the experimentation

Garnet Canuck

I just peeled mine off with my fingernail.

RedHerring

iTrader: (1)

These blue dots are really pissing me off. Can't get them off with anything I have tried yet. I guess I will just "peel them off with my fingernail". Pure Genius.

marsb007

why do you want to take them off?

These dots are actually used by a competent wheel shop to better balance your tires on your rims. You're that upset over these blue dots?

mal_TX

What? I've never had a car with blue dots on the wheels before this one. Explain how the blue dots help the tire shop, please

helldorado

Its for match mounting. No tire or wheel is perfectly balanced to itself from the manufacturer. The blue dot represents the high runout location on the wheel, while a red dot on the tire represents the coordination runout position on the tire. By using those 2 references, it allows a tire shop to more accurately balance the wheel and tire combo if they don't have high end equipment that can do individual wheel run out and test variations under load.

You can remove the dot, but unless you're paying for for work done at shop that has the higher end Hunter Road Force balancers, you're more likely to get vibration on your next set of tires.

mal_TX

Wow thanks. So should the blue/red dots oppose each other?

chocoholic

iTrader: (1)

I wondered about the blue dots too, but in the end just left them on. I heard they had something to do with balancing...

helldorado

Pretty much.

IP37

why not just mark it on the barrels where you won't see it

marsb007

When you're looking for new tires, you'll often see some coloured dots on the tire sidewall, and bands of colour in the tread. These are all here for a reason, but it's more for the tire fitter than for your benefit.

The dots on the sidewall typically denote unformity and weight. It's impossible to manufacture a tire which is perfectly balanced and perfectly manufactured in the belts. As a result, all tires have a point on the tread which is lighter than the rest of the tire - a thin spot if you like. It's fractional - you'd never notice it unless you used tire manufacturing equipment to find it, but its there.

When the tire is manufactured, this point is found and a coloured dot is put on the sidewall of the tire corresponding to the light spot. Typically this is a yellow dot (although some manufacturers use different colours just to confuse us) and is known as the weight mark. Typically the yellow dot should end up aligned to the valve stem on your wheel and tire combo. This is because you can help minimize the amount of weight needed to balance the tire and wheel combo by mounting the tire so that its light point is matched up with the wheel's heavy balance point. Every wheel has a valve stem which cannot be moved so that is considered to be the heavy balance point for the wheel.

As well as not being able to manufacture perfectly weighted tires, it's also nearly impossible to make a tire which is perfectly circular. By perfectly circular, I mean down to some nauseating number of decimal places. Again, you'd be hard pushed to actually be able to tell that a tire wasn't round without specialist equipment. Every tire has a high and a low spot, the difference of which is called radial runout. Using sophisticated computer analysis, tire manufacturers spin each tire and look for the 'wobble' in the tire at certain RPMs. It's all about harmonic frequency. Where the first harmonic curve from the tire wobble hits its high point, that's where the tire's high spot is. Manufacturers typically mark this point with a red dot on the tire sidewall, although again, some tires have no marks, and others use different colours. This is called the uniformity mark.

Correspondingly, most wheel rims are also not 100% circular, and will have a notch or a dimple stamped into the wheel rim somewhere indicating their low point. It makes sense then, that the high point of the tire should be matched with the low point of the wheel rim to balance out the radial runout.
What if both dots are present?

Generally speaking, if you get a tire with both a red and a yellow dot on it, it should be mounted according to the red dot - ie. the uniformity mark should line up with the dimple on the wheel rim, and the yellow mark should be ignored.

RedHerring

iTrader: (1)

The problem is that one of my wheels has not one, but two dots, and some of the blue dribbled down the side of one of the spokes.

Good Question: Why not mark the barrel and not screw up the wheel aesthetically?

mal_TX

Yeah, plus it looks like one of my blue dots is melting in the heat and coming off on it's own and also running down the spoke.

shumby

iTrader: (3)

I know for a fact the 2 dots is a mistake. It was put on by mistake of the machine (CID) if you work for Michelin. Also just for some info a tire that does have high spots can be ground down on a machine called the (RIS) if it's a michelin but this is done before the tire ever leaves the plant. These 2 machines also check for side wall deformities and open joints. Of the Major tire manufacturers I know Michelin is the only company that does this and a visual inspection of 100% of their tires. Every oter major tire manufactuer does spot checks or a precentage of runs. As well tires are x-rayed and the steal elt joints and edges are checked for open or over lapped joints or missing threads.