1960s CAX wheel weights

[Clewisiii]

Do the internal stick on wheel weights balance just fine. Or for best balance should I use CAX wheel weights.

They are getting expensive and hard to find. Trying to decide if I should buy a bunch now just to have in case.

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

In a word, Yes.   So long as you put them where they cannot come in contact with anything that might remove them.

As for CAX weights, I have a supply of various weights, but postage to USA is a bit over the top.

Bruce.

[J. Skelly]

I bought some at my local NAPA dealer several years ago.

[Big Fins]

FleaBay has tons of listings for them.

[Clewisiii]

FleaBay has tons of listings for them.

At $40-50 for about 5. But hard to tell what weights I need in advance so I would end up dropping $200 today to have a selection. Since I do not know what the cost will be in 3 years when I need them.

[TJ Hopland]

What I ended up doing was buying larger weights (3oz I think) and cutting them down to the needed sizes.   I did it partially because of cost, as noted if you had to buy a box of 25 of each likely size thats like 6-10 boxes.   Also the smaller more commonly sizes seem to have got used up leaving the less common larger ones in stock. 

The reason I have heard that at least in the USA the CAX weights are very difficult to find is that many years ago when lead became a bad thing there were programs likely by the new non lead suppliers to exchange out shops existing stock of lead weights and due to lack of enough demand no one made/makes a non lead CAX.  Any corporate sort of place would have got rid off all their lead weights.  I suspect many independents also got rid of their old stock too and maybe didn't realize they would not be able to easily get the CAX weighs from the current suppliers.

The 67-78 FWD Eldo's really seem to do better with the CAX weights but were and are a pretty unique rim design to accommodate that specific FWD design.  There also really isn't room to place a typical stick on weight on the outside so you have to go inside and I don't think the machines are expecting that so are not very accurate at telling the tech what to do so I think they get frustrated can just call it good enough. 

Since the car in question isn't a FWD eldo I would guess there should be room to place stick on weights on the outside but again the issue may be the balance machines are not quite expecting those locations.  Most of the machines have presets where you select the type of wheel to help it be the most accurate in placement.  IF you select steel its assuming clamp on weights right at the bead area.  A stick on isn't going to be at that exact location so it won't be quite right in that mode. 

But you say what about selecting Aluminum mode since that is why we even have stick on weights anyway?  Again thats making some assumptions.  A typical aluminum wheel is going to be a lot thicker in many places than a steel wheel so its expecting the weights to be in different spots than where they would end up on a steel wheel. 

Having the wrong mode or type selected isn't going to make an out of balance wheel say its in balance its just going to make it a pain for the tech.  Making up numbers here but say the machine says to place 1/2 oz weight here in aluminum mode but because its steel the weight is going to be 1/2" further out because of the thinner walls maybe it really should have been 3/4 oz?  So when the tech puts a 1/2 oz there its not going to correct the balance.  I think this is how you can end up with a dozen weights on a wheel.  They try for a while and basically either get lucky or just give up.

An interesting observation I have made dealing with this stuff recently is at least the CAX weights that I have to play with don't actually weigh what they say they do.  Standard clip on weights do weigh the same.  I don't remember if its a little more or less but they seem to be consistently off.  I don't have that many brands or batches to sample so maybe its just quality control but I wonder if they did that intentionally knowing that they placement would  be slightly different than the tire machines were expecting?