Enamel for alloy wheel?

[Avocet]

If you know so much about balancing and have access to the best balancing machines out there, why are you the one having vibration problems and not me? I stick to the speed limit of 50 or 70mph, and I get no vibrations whatsoever. I go slightly out of town for shopping in order to get free parking and less crowding. The distance is also used to exercise the car for tip top condition.

I have a further theory: you have loose suspension components, and you are mistaking those for wheel vibration. Your propensity to fit wrong part to car doesn't help.

Er... I'm not? I get new tyres when I need them (which is rather more often than you, because I actually drive my car quite often), I get the wheels balanced, and then there are no vibrations. It's so easy! I did once have a new pair of tyres fitted and they didn't do a very good job of balancing the wheels, so I noticed a slight vibration on the motorway. I took it back and they said they were sorry and balanced them again properly, and the problem went away. It didn't cost me anything either - it was just so easy! Like magic!

Your car isn't in tip-top condition. Your wheel photos and decade-old tyres alone, are testament to that!

You're welcome to your theory. It's wrong, but that does appear to be the way you like them! I'm responsible for the maintenance of 4 cars in our house and I have a 5th as a company car that I don't maintain. After the best part of 40 years as an engineer working in the car industry, I'm pretty comfortable with being able to tell the difference between a wheel out of balance and various other sources of vibration that I doubt you'd even notice, let alone be able to diagnose!

 

[Burnerman]

Turning the clock back ages.....
Remember the 'on car wheel balancer?'
The operator sat astride it and it spun the wheel when on the car - which includes the hub and disc of course.
I don't know how good or bad these things were, but it did the trick for us.
We had to do this on a friends Mk 1 Escort Mexico (K reg I think) - would be worth a fortune now!
John

 

[Stivino]

Remember the 'on car wheel balancer?'

We had one of those, it was a fixture on one of the ramps. There was a magnetic pick-up that was put on the suspension, and I seem to remember that it had a strobe light and an electric motor that you pushed onto the tyre to spin the wheel up.

 

[Mottie]

We had one of those, it was a fixture on one of the ramps. There was a magnetic pick-up that was put on the suspension, and I seem to remember that it had a strobe light and an electric motor that you pushed onto the tyre to spin the wheel up.

Yeah, we had one at the Vauxhall main dealership I did my apprenticeship at. An angled wheel, a spring loaded plunger you fitted under the wishbone and a strobe. You spun it up, pushed it onto the tyre, the light flashed and you noted where the valve was. Stopped the wheel, set it into the position it was flashing at by positioning the valve, and added weights to the top (or maybe bottom). Try again adding more or less weights until it didn’t strobe any more. Something like this although the pick-up wasn’t as technical as this one.