GM tire/wheel info

[Chevy454]

I got this info from Dave Heleila over on the Pure Stock site, but found it pretty good reading. He was with Olds back in the day, but knew some of the workings of the other GM divisions as well. Anyway, read on...

Factory balancing
All GM plants at that time used one weight to balance the wheel and tire assembly. Single plane, static balance. Hot wax was deposited in a color code to denote how much to put, and the tire was rotated and another yellow wax dot showed where to put it. You either got a 1/2 oz, 1 oz, 1 1/2 or 2 oz. Any more than that and the tire/wheel assy was rejected and replaced by another assy. Rejected ones were torn down and reassembled on another wheel/tire. Our main wheel and tire room at Oldsmobile Lansing ran at 600/hour in that time period, so that doesn't leave time to do split weighting like this tire/wheel. Some units were rebalanced with split weights in the audit area, so I guess I should never say never.

I think all the automakers used similar single plane equipment at that time (Micropoise, I believe), so my best guess is that is al old wheel/tire from a tire dealer. Toronadoes used dual plane dynamic balancing due to the huge offset in the wheel. That was done on another line.

My 68 came from the factory with Goodyear steel radials (an option on Cutlass, but not 442's) but they were defective and unsafe. Goodyear recalled all of them and gave a new set of anything you want just to get them off the road.