Road Force balancing - big deal or not?
 

I'm a pig-headed know-it-all. I've been insisting on having all of my wheels road-force balanced since I first got my Miata fifteen years ago. I've never reconsidered that policy and I've never been dissatisfied with a tire balance.

I just plunked down too much money on mounting and balancing a set of RS4s onto 15x9 Konigs for track-use only.

Is there still a reason to pay for this fancy-pants balancing or do I need to actually open my ears and learn something? The guy at the shop said they only really use the roadforce balancer when they're trying to diagnose an issue. I smiled politely and told him this is just my personal quirk.

I've never bothered with it. Almost certainly a waste on track wheels/tires as the tire can rotate on the rim under hard braking.

You need the wheels measured for runout independently of the tire to do it, which means almost nobody does it 100%correctly on used or aftermarket wheels. Some tire manufacturers don't QC test or mark red dots for high points. In those cases you have to mount, measure Rf, dismount, rotate the tire, remount, then balance. GTFO.
It can help really persnickety cars, but even when I was working in shops who had the machinery, we used it about 1% of the time. Maybe 1 set per month in a 4-800 unit/month shop, almost always just to cure a lingering high speed vibe.

Match mounting works. I match mount 90% of everything that is marked. 6ULs dont seem to care with the opposing dual valve weights, but I've had several sets of Enkei and Konig roll out of here so far at less than an oz of total weight for the whole set.
Again, as soon as you have any OOR in the wheel, it doesn't matter where/what orientation the tire is mounted.

I'm interested in this as well. If you go to miata.net they swear on doing road force balancing. That being said, my 97 does have the 65mph shimmy/shake. I haven't had it balanced since I bought the car though.

Check PPF height. Pinion angle astray can incite vibrations at highway speeds. Most Miata owners seem to ignore this step when R&R drivetrain bits.

Not familiar with "Road Force balancing", but
You need to be using a competent shop (I have had some balances where they have slapped on an incredible number of weights and the wheel is still not properly balanced).

Also, it seems that tires are getting better. Just had some Conti ECS's put on the car and I noticed that 2 of the wheels had 0 weights. First I thought, "oh, they forgot to balance these", but
I mounted them and they run perfectly on the miata. No shimmy/shake or vibrations.

I had a set of Conti DWS mounted on an M3 and one wheel had 1/4 oz of weight on it.
I asked the manager of my Discount WTF?
He said he had recently toured the Continental factory where they are making tires with segmented molds which allow very precise injection of rubber.
Most of the Continental tires are so close they need no or minimal weights.
This is great as the tires should require minimal rebalancing during their life and a tire moving on the rim (racing) will have little effect on balance.

Most tire shops do NOT have techs that equal the quality of their equipment.
I no longer take them cars, just wheels and tires.

Road-force and other "newest thing" balancing are seldom necessary if a competent tech is doing the tire mounting.
I learned balancing with a tire machine that had needles in two gauges (30 years back) and I prefer the old machines.
The modern digital balancers are much quicker but will not show imbalances below 1/4 ounce.
The needles would...

Doward is dead on. I'd have him mount my stuff if I could...

OPR will throw weight balance off more then road force balancing will have fixed it initially, uneven wear notwithstanding. As long as your wheels are true (or close enough to it) a quick balance is all you need for race tires. Dowards runout measurement is very true too, especially with bias-ply slicks. Radials are far more consistent, but we tend to match bias slicks by runout, otherwise wonky things can happen when you have tires with 1/2" of runout difference on the back axle together.

Tarmac 88
380 W. Olentangy St. #4
Powell, OH 43065

:)

looks like about 1150 miles.
Yep, too far.
A suggestion:
Move to Texas, I'll keep your street cars AC working and you can mount my tires.
I'm 10 miles away from Motorsports Ranch. Plenty of race tire work available...

You can mount my tires too. See a pattern?

BTW, lots of Ohioans down here.