I have 2 new Hankook Ventus V12 Evo tyres sat in my garage. Want to get them mounted today or tomorrow. There are 2 dots on them 1 red and 1 yellow. My understanding is that the yellow dot should be aligned with the valve? Can anyone let me know if this is the case (or not!) before I go and get the tyres mounted. Hankook do not supply contact details on their European website.

 

The red dot lines up with freedom and the yellow dot with capitalism.

 

The 65 MPH Vibration

 

Yellow dot aligned with valvestem takes priority.

Red dot is related to uniformity and is usually not used.

 

What if you have two valves? What then?!?!

 

I do.

I did it the easy way. There is one shop in town that has a Hunter Road Force balancer. I just gave them the new 6ULs and RS3's and had them put in writing on the shop ticket that I want two fronts with no more than a 10 lb road force and two rears that can be up to 15. NO rim weights, tape weights on the inside only.

When I went in to pic them up he said after mounting it took them an hour moving tires around on the wheels and swapped two tires on different wheels but he got it done.

I didn't look at the dots. Tires were marked with the road force in lbs and marked as to which was the RF, LR, etc. It does ride smooth, though. Sucks that this shop is $25/wheel to mount and balance. Throw in 8 stems and it was a $120 bill to mount and balance. They are good, they know it, and charge accordingly.

 

Road Force balancing is always the answer. every shop should have one.

http://www.gsp9700.com/pub/search/findgsp9700.cfm

 

I wish more did. They just got theirs since my last mount/balance.

Previously, the only shop in town that had one interestingly enough was the Chrysler dealer. I used them on the last tires. They did it, but weren't really interested in doing carry-in walk in business which was understandable.

 

Unless the tire manufacturer (ie, Kuhmo) only use a single red dot:

 

most tire manufacturers (i assume it includes Kumho) use the red mark to indicate the tallest point in the tire, and it should be aligned with the most shallow point in the wheel (usually marked with a dimple).

since yours did not have a yellow dot, perhaps the tire did not have a significant enough light weight spot to mark for balancing purposes. then, at that point you could use the red dot to help match mount the wheel/tire combo.

 

I'm almost positive Khumo marks the lightest spot of the tire with a red dot, therefore you should align with the valve stem as it should be the heaviest of the wheel.

Tire Rack seems to suggest ignore them and just put the tires on a good machine.