How accurate does wheel balancing need to be?

Every unbalanced mass on a wheel creates its own centrifugal force as the wheel turns, with its own point of application. Let’s recall school physics: the formula for centrifugal force:

Where m, in our case, is the unbalanced mass, w is the angular velocity (the speed of rotation), and R is the radius from the axis of rotation to the unbalanced mass.

We can see that the size of the centrifugal force depends on the speed of rotation, the unbalanced mass and the radius from the axis to the unbalanced mass. From this we can draw the following conclusions:

• as speed increases, the harmful effect and all the negative consequences of an unbalanced (or poorly balanced) wheel grow considerably;
• the tyre has the greatest effect on the wheel’s overall condition, because it sits furthest from the axis of rotation.

So, the higher a car’s average speed, the more critical the quality of the wheel balancing, and the more dangerous the effects of poor balancing.