Wheel weights

jtl

Member
:
CX-5 GT w/Tech
Holy crap there are a lot of wheel weights on the front wheels. I counted 9 on the pass side a few less on the drivers side. This tells me these 19"s are not manufactured to very high specs.
John
 
^Funny you mention, I noticed the same thing about 10 minutes ago. I have a row of about 7 of them on the passenger front.
 
It gets worse I have 13 on the rear drivers side and only 3 on the rear pass side. That is a lot of correction for a new rim. Not too please about this because I have never in all my years seen anything close to this.
 
It gets worse I have 13 on the rear drivers side and only 3 on the rear pass side. That is a lot of correction for a new rim. Not too please about this because I have never in all my years seen anything close to this.

This is no doubt tire weight imbalance, not rim!
 
^Ok, so this just made me go out and count.

I'm in the lead... 18.. let me type that again: EIGHT-EFFIN-TEEN on the passenger rear.

Wow.
 
This is not good. We need to find out what is going on while these cars a brand new. Whether tires or wheels it is not acceptable. At some point down the road it may be impossible to balance these wheels as the tires wear. I have owned a lot of cars in my life and I have never seen anything like this. Maybe one or none on a new car. We need to get the word out and contact Mazda. I just emailed my salesperson it will be interesting to see his response. As these not so cheap tires wear they may need even more balancing. Maybe someone knows a person knowledgeable in tire balancing who could give us an opinion.
 
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I emailed Mazda USA to see what their reaction is.

I'll also shoot a call to the dealership where I purchased her.
 
Good, if enough of us complain this early on there may be a satisfactory resolution. I think it is substandard quality. If I would have looked for that when I went to pick it up I would have refused to close the sale.
 
Found this info on TireRack while researching:

How many wheel weights are too many?

While there is no industry standard, the general consensus of what is too much weight is when it takes more than 1% of the assembly weight to bring it into balance.

Let's take a test example of one incident I recently encountered when a customer expressed concern that 15 wheel weights were used on his 19" BMW wheel and tire package. Is 15 weights too many? Let's find out.
Each stick-on weight is a quarter of an ounce
15 weights on one wheel = 3.75 ounces
19x8.5 wheel weight = 27.5 pounds
235/35R19 tire = 24.0 pounds
Total package weight = 51.5 pounds or 824 ounces
1% of that = 8.2 ounces
15 weights (3.75 ounces total) is very reasonable given the total weight of the wheel and tire in this example. - See more at: http://blog.tirerack.com/blog/make-...el-weights-are-too-many-#sthash.57YCcALA.dpuf
 
Good job, but is still isn't right. I have owned 7 new cars including a previous Mazda, never encountered this.
 
^Not disagreeing with you. I have heavy 18" wheels on the BMW and one or two per wheel at most.
 
Got the automated email response from Mazda.

We'll see how long it takes to get a real answer.
 
The Bimmer example could have been after market wheels and tires. Mazda should have made sure their tire/wheel combo at the OEM level worked and it didn't.
 
Could it be the fact that the wheels are 19"X7" with 55 aspect tires?
It's an odd tire size since most 19s are at least 7.5" wide & are paired with low profile tires.
Trying to balance a larger rolling diameter is harder vs 19s w/ <40 series tires.
 
This is very interesting and I'm wondering if anyone is experiencing slight (very slight) steering wheel vibration at highway speed?
 
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