Wheel weights and Balancing

[boss2k]

Recently i got my rear tires changed and Discount tire (DT) put on little weights on the new tires whereas comparing them to the front ones ( original from the factory) they have more wheel weights.

Is that fine and DT tells me it all depends on the balance of the wheels and ideally they should not have any weights. Car runs fine and dont see any issues.

Secondly the front tires have never been balanced ( they are part of staggered setup), does it need to get balanced once in 10K miles or less , does anyone do that.

[hc1001]

the weights are fine. they are to balance the tire and rim together. you changed the tire, so it needs to be balanced along with the rim.

for the front wheels, they should be balanced if you experience vibration when driving at higher speeds. usually around 50-70mph... the steering wheel shakes as well as the front of the car. if you are not experiencing this, you dont need to balance them.

[Cliche Guevara]

The rears will have more weight simply because they're wider wheels and, by extension, a little heavier. Heavier assemblies typically require more weight to balance out properly. Also, it could very well simply appear to have more wieght on it. We've recently switched from lead wheels weights to iron due to the lovely health and environmental issues that come with lead. Obviously iron is less dense so the same amound of weight will be bigger than its lead counterpart.