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Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:35 pm

How do you guys with wide five wheels (larger center opening) get your wheels/tires balanced?

I have a 1974 Thing and recently bought new tires for my stock 14" wheels. The previous owner didn't get the wheels/tires balanced and the wheels/tires did the shimmy-shake at various speeds.

I bought a wide five adapter off of a vendor on this site, hoping that it would allow the tire shop to mount and balance my new tires.
They were able to mount the tires, but because the bolt pattern was slightly off, compared to the center hole, the shop couldn't balance the tire/wheels.

So now I'm looking for another way to balance my wheels. So far I've looked into purchasing a set of wheel adapter (wide 5 to some other bolt pattern), but the cost of having them shipped to Canada is considerably more than I want to pay.
Another option could be to get an old brake drum and have it machined so it could be used as an adapter, but again, this won't be cheap.

I live in an area that has only 4 or 5 tire stores, and none of them have an adapter for a VW wide five wheel.

So, how do you get your wide fives balanced?

Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:55 pm

Here in AZ I go to Discount Tire and they can do it as they have an adapter.

I have heard people use one of these from the site:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1476281

There may be others too, that is what came up for me in a quick search.

Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:12 pm

balance beads, they worked on my last 2 sets of tires. I was skeptical but had to try them.

Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:34 pm

I just ordered a pair (can't order just 1) of wide five to 4X130 wheel adapters from Cip1,which is located fairly close to me. Hopefully, these will do the trick.

Everett, I do have a wide 5 wheel rim balance adapter plate, but a couple of the bolt holes were just slightly off center in relationship to the center hole and the shop couldn't get an accurate balance.
I bought the adapter from a vendor on this forum, but I can't remember if it was from the one you have listed in your post.

Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:01 pm

Serious question - Would you have to make sure the adapters are balanced first?

Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:45 am

911pickup wrote: I just ordered a pair (can't order just 1) of wide five to 4X130 wheel adapters from Cip1,which is located fairly close to me. Hopefully, these will do the trick.

Everett, I do have a wide 5 wheel rim balance adapter plate, but a couple of the bolt holes were just slightly off center in relationship to the center hole and the shop couldn't get an accurate balance.
I bought the adapter from a vendor on this forum, but I can't remember if it was from the one you have listed in your post.

Bad news. I tried this just yesterday. I got some in and sent 'em to the machine shop to grind out the centre hole to match the "cone" our balancer uses. They called back and said that the centre hole is not a "centred" hole. When bolted to a 4 bolt drum it's fine, but as is, it won't be true.
I think I'm gonna get one of those plates Everett linked to.

PS. I recognize your location. Awesome.
http://breakpointtravelguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Goats-on-the-Roof1.jpg

Sat Jun 23, 2018 1:19 pm

That definitely is not good news.

If the adapters don't work I may give up on the stock wheels (with the open centers) and buy a set of wide five aluminum wheels (with a filled in center).
I was going to originally go this route, but I had already purchased the balancing adapter plate, so I thought I'd save some money and only buy new 14 inch tires.

Everett, I'm going to take the adapters into the tire shop and see if they can get the tires balance. It may not be perfect, but with such a light front end 'close' may be good enough.
Right now my wheels/tires aren't balance and for the most part they don't shake or shimmy, except between 45 and 48 mph. Unfortunately, the shimmy/shake is pretty severe and it's not something I can live with.

As for the balancer plate that Everett linked to, I have one and it has the same problem your adapters has.
I bought it a year ago and I no longer have the bill, so I'm not sure which vendor I bought it from.
Let me know if you have better luck with the balancer plate.

Fri Jun 29, 2018 11:21 am

The wheel adapters from Cip1 worked, but I discovered that all of the wheels were slightly bent.
Still, the shop was able to balance the tire/wheels, but one wheel did need a ton lead to get it close to balanced.

My carb is off and on its way to Volkzbitz for restoration so I won't be able to drive the car for a while to see if it's shimmy free.

If I had it to do again, I would have paid the extra money for new aluminum 15 inch wheels.

Fri Jun 29, 2018 12:33 pm

EverettB wrote: Serious question - Would you have to make sure the adapters are balanced first?
Serious answer - Of Course.

Max

Mon Jul 02, 2018 5:14 pm

Seems the Cip1 adapters were balanced enough to allow the shop to balance the tire/wheel.
Having said that, I haven't driven my Thing yet.

Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:13 pm

[

Bad news. I tried this just yesterday. I got some in and sent 'em to the machine shop to grind out the centre hole to match the "cone" our balancer uses. They called back and said that the centre hole is not a "centred" hole. When bolted to a 4 bolt drum it's fine, but as is, it won't be true.
I think I'm gonna get one of those plates Everett linked to.

the machine shop should of centered the hole when they opened it up or angled it. the hole needs to be centered to the bolt pattern, not the od. it also should be ballanced&true. it should be centered to the od and bolt pattern. but od isant nessary as long as it is balanced.

Sat Jul 07, 2018 4:08 pm

mark tucker wrote: [

I think I'm gonna get one of those plates Everett linked to.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have one of those (bought it off a vendor on this site).
Unfortunately, when bolted to a wheel the center hole was slightly off. Because of this the shop was not able to balance my wheels.

Mine may have been an exception. Maybe we'll hear from others who purchased one of these adapters and had no problem getting their wheels balanced.

Sun Jul 08, 2018 7:10 pm

I knew one of the guys selling these/having them made. not the brightest spoon in the tire rack, (quite clueless on most of everything).I tried to get across to him that they need more than he was doing. If the unit( adapter plate) is not centered AND balanced it is useless. but!!! it can still be used to balance wheels....by morons that dont know any better as the end result will be out of balance wheels. just balancing the plate does nothing if the bolt pattern is off set from the center hole. the plate also needs to run true. the guy seems to always be looking for the next quick $$ scheme.

Tue Jul 10, 2018 3:39 am

1 oz of 'beads' per tire ,cuz they do semi tires and they usually don't know how much for the lil' vw tire :wink: :lol:

Mon Sep 10, 2018 7:07 pm

I've run the balancing beads on both my Beetle and Bus and have been happy with them. I also like that you don't have to worry about losing a weight or anything with the balancing beads.

Tue Sep 25, 2018 10:21 am

I'm using Dynabeads now and they work pretty well. The key is to ensure you have enough of them in each tire (follow the manufacturers instructions) and that you have the tires properly inflated and no other steering or front suspension issues. My 67 Bug runs pretty smooth and shimmy free at cruising speeds with them.

I got the Dynabeads because I couldn't find a tire shop that could accurately spin balance my wide 5's on their modern machines. But I wonder if you could use an old (but undamaged) rear drum as an adapter? I thought it could be mounted in the machine and spin balanced itself, then with the wheel properly bolted to it (and torqued correctly) spin balance the whole assembly.

Could work, right?

Tue Sep 25, 2018 7:54 pm

I was thinking more of a front drum but I guess it depends on what the tire machine takes for size of hole.

Yes I have a sand rail that has wide 5 all around and none of the tire shops here can do then either. The fronts are so bad that the front end of the frame disappears in a blur and the tires hop up and down so bad you can see 2" of daylight under them at about 55 mph!

Fortunately it is not a street car and rarely is driven that fast on the back trails.

Fri Aug 18, 2023 9:59 pm

Yes, I know, old post. But relevant, since I had the same problem as the OP.

A few years ago I optimistically purchased a wide-5 adaptor plate from that same vendor on this site. Today on a balancing machine we found that the central hole in the plate was not concentric to the wide-5 bolt circle. We also noticed that some of the threaded holes in the plate were far from perpendicular, one could easily see a tilt in a couple of the wheel mounting bolts used.

A useless piece of junk that is now in the metal recycle pile.
<sigh>......OK, moving on.

Sat Aug 19, 2023 1:25 am

You could try a bubble wheel balancer, a bit more time consuming to balance but maybe easier to fit the wheels.

Sat Aug 19, 2023 8:47 am

Perhaps I was a little hasty.......my balancing specialist suggested to take the adaptor to a precision machine shop, and to drill and tap 5 new holes on a 205 mm diameter circle. So, I'll pull it out of the scrap pile for now.