Got my 285/75r16s installed yesterday!

https://imgur.com/gallery/OwpCb

 

Alex, it would be great to see a writeup and parts on that panhard conversion! Are you worried about the weld brackets breaking at all? Simon @ RTE said most of his customers that did the conversion ended up breaking the brackets off at some point, and that's whats holding him back from selling his own conversion kit.

 

Definitely will be doing a write up! I've got all the pictures, just need the time to sit down and write it.

No, I'm not worried about the welds breaking. I took my time with it and got good welds, at least where I could see, and I reinforced extra to make up for the couple spots I couldn't really see. I'll be keeping an eye on it, though, and may end up reinforcing more.

I definitely understand Simon's concern. Most people can't weld as well as they think they can. The key is prep work, taking your time, and having yourself positioned right for good line of sight and hand control.

 

Alex_M - Why did you allow the tire installers to use the weights that mount on the outside of the rim?

Not to be a dick but, I am always confused on why people allow this to happen and curious if there is some reason that I am not aware of. The installer for my tires always mounts the weights on the inside of the rim.

Especially for vehicles that will be spinning wheels in the mud and other material that will rip them off.

 

+1 on the above, Its a shame when they put the weights on the outside of nice rims. They would not do that on a G wagon!

I've found you have to tell them ahead of time and they are always happy to do so.

 

Honestly, I've never thought about it. They have weights on the inside and the outside. I assumed it had something to do with side to side balance, but that doesn't make sense in my head now that I think about it because of the way rims are made.

 

Can you take them back and ask them to use the weights that are attached to the inner part of the rim?

Also - If someone has the rational as to why installers do this please let me know.

I have taken my vehicles (for the last 20 years) to shops that focuses on high performance vehicles and they have always used the weights that mount inside the rim.

My uneducated thoughts on why they did this, outside of looking better, was that the weights that attaches to the outside or inside of the rim lips can be knocked off by hard corning or (for off road vehicles) knocked off by debris like stumps, rocks, or ice.

 

You can get a better balance out of using weights on both sides. If they don't place them on the outside then they use stick on weights and in my experience stick on's don't stay stuck on forever.

If a tire balances out to have a ton of weights on the outside the tech can try rotating the tire on the rim, but it just depends. Then there is the old airsoft pellet/tire bead trick, but man do you sound funny at slow speeds.

Off roading a wheel weight can be knocked off either side, and stick on weights can fall off in the mud/water.

 

This^^^

You have to put the weight where it is needed. If the outer edge of the tire is thinner/lighter and the inner edge is thicker/heavier...then on the outer edge is where the weight has to go. You can't add to the inside edge, it would only unbalance the tire even more.

Brian.

 

I live in Washington with a fair amount of rain and in the 20 years I have had the stick on weights they have never fallen off. Granted...those 20 years have been in high performance vehicles and not a Land Rover in the mud

Brian - The inner weights go on both sides, I can take a picture on my rims to show you. I do beg to differ that the rim mounts provide better balancing as none of my high performance cars nor the track cars have weights mounted on the rim lips. If this did provide better balancing, my assumption would be that the high performance community would be leveraging this instead of the inner mount weights, however, I am not an expert and have no data to back up my comment other than personal experience and what I see at the track.

My thoughts...it may just boil down to ascetics as I could not find any articles on advantages of lip mounted verses adhesive. But, I am still very interested if anyone has some info that provides advantages from one set up to the another.