A member of my family went to the tire store and came home with a new set of wheels and tires. After that, the tires/wheels never balanced properly until I fixed the problem. The front end would start to vibrate at 60 miles per hour and the vibration would increase with speed. This type of vibration can be caused by wheel imbalance, worn steering parts and worn tires. Most wheels that come on new cars maintain concentricity of the wheel and hub with a snug fit of the hub, see white arrow, and the bore in the center of the wheel. The lug bolts only keep the wheels on the car. The lug bolts do not center the wheel.The lug bolts are not located with the same level of precision as the hub. Most after market wheels have large clearance holes around the hub and use the lug bolts to center the wheel. This is so the wheels will fit on many different size hubs so the seller needs to stock fewer wheel sizes. The balance machine balances the wheel at one eccentricity on the balance machine then the wheel is bolted on the car with a different eccentricity and is no longer in balance. To fix this problem and test my theory, I had the tire shop (for free) balance the wheels using the lug bolts only. I fabricated and pressed in hub-centric rings that matched the hub on my vehicle. I then had the tire shop check the balance and tell me if the wheels were still in balance. The first time the shop balanced the wheels using the lug bolts only. The second time the shop balanced the wheels centered on the wheel hub rings. The shop noted a significant difference in balance between the two centering methods. Balancing the wheels relative to the hub-centric rings fixed the vibration problem. This method allowed the balance goodness imparted by the balance machine to be transferred to my vehicle.

When I went to the shop the second time and told them I wanted the wheels balanced relative to the hub-centric rings. The white arrow points to the hub ring on the car. They said that they like to balance aluminum wheels relative to the lug bolts. Then they said that they like to remove any hub-centric rings before they balance. It is possible that you could have rings in place and the tire shop would balance the wheels relative to the lug bolts. I had to carefully explain what I wanted being as tactful as possible. They let me watch what they did. I also got the chance to verify the setup of the balance machine, that they had selected the correct tapered bushing to contact my rings. They were believers by the end of the experiment.

The reason that I made my own rings was because I did not like the way commercially available rings were specified. Sellers did not list the tolerance on the size of the rings so I could not tell how good the fit would be to the hub or wheel. I designed and built my rings to press fit into the wheels and with a clearance of less than 0.001 inch fit on the hub. Next time I will have the rings anodized.

Fabrication:

You first need to find the largest hub of the four and fit the rings to that. The rings should be test fitted on the hubs before pressing them into the wheels. Measurements are best done with Telescope gages and micrometers as opposed to calipers. Make sure to add a chamfer so that the ring does not interfere with any radius at the root of the wheel hub. I added an alignment feature to make the rings self aligning as they are pressed in. I also fabricated a custom part used to press in the rings without damaging them. There is not a lot of risk when pressing the rings. If they fail to seat properly they can be removed with a powered sanding drum and a new ring fabricated.