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Thread: How I mounted and balanced the 275/40-17 tires on the front and rear for my 55

  1. #1
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    How I mounted and balanced the 275/40-17 tires on the front and rear for my 55

    After spending countless hours over the last 5 years trying to decide what wheels, and tires to use on my C4 55 I finally made the decision to try and make 275/40-17 tires work on the front and rear of my 55 with the wide C4 suspension. The tire size was picked so I would have several choices for some really sticky tires, which for now is the Nitto NT05 extreme performance summer tire. They have only 70% tread depth new, with a 200 tread wear rating. For the wheels, I wanted something vintage looking, and not modern flat face Corvette wheels with 56mm offsets. Bought the American Racing (china) torque thrusts that were originally made for C4 fitments that are 17 x 9.5 with a 46mm offset with around 7 inches of backspace, plus the wheels were only $145 ea. shipped. So after spending so much time deciding, I spent a little more time on mounting, and using some of the features on my Hunter road force balancer.
    First I checked the lateral/radial run-out on the bare wheels. 2 wheels checked out great, and 2 were marginal but passed. I then balanced all 4 wheels using masking tape to hold the weights on so I could see exactly how much imbalance was in the tires. I mounted the tires using my Corghi Master tire machine I've been using for 16 years, which works great. After inflating all of the tires to 30 psi with nitrogen, I checked the road force, and balanced. 2 of the tires that went on the marginal wheels checked out great for road force, but the 2 tires on the really round rims were over the 28 pound limit with one being 44 pounds of road force, which is basically run-out in the tire. I indexed the tires on those 2 wheels, and it knocked the road force numbers by over half. I then balanced them down to the finest level of less than 1/8 of an ounce, the weight of a small rock pebble. Of course all 4 wheels wanted a strip of lead tape weights in between the wheel spokes, so I split the weights in order to hide them out of sight behind the spokes.
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    Last edited by 55 Rescue Dog; 09-05-2020 at 07:22 AM.

  2. #2
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    And believe it or not I think they are going to fit perfect, and stick like glue. The car is still well above final ride height at this point, but I think it will be tight in the front fully compressed, and didn't really want to use the inner fenders anyway. The rears have plenty of room.
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    Last edited by 55 Rescue Dog; 09-05-2020 at 07:12 AM.

  3. #3
    Registered Member BamaNomad's Avatar
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    I like the way it sits/looks now, RD... and I'm really impressed that you have your own tire machine with such great capabilities! Can I bring my next set of wheels/tires up to you?

    PS. I put 17x8.5 wheels and 245-45x17 tires and my '57 Nomad is sitting TOO LOW even before I get all the part on it. I think I'm going to have to go with a higher profile tire to get it 'right for me'...

  4. #4
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    About a month ago I bought one test fit wheel, and scrounged up a 17 inch tire. I hadn't really planned on a 275/40-17 tire, but that was the only size I could find to try initially. Anything narrower wouldn't have looked right on a 9.5 inch wide wheel. I used my kent-moore factory service tool, a traverse leaf spring compressor to fully compress the front suspension. That tool make it so much easier to deal with the front suspension by being able to take the spring pressure off to disassemble.
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    Last edited by 55 Rescue Dog; 09-05-2020 at 02:56 PM.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by BamaNomad View Post
    I like the way it sits/looks now, RD... and I'm really impressed that you have your own tire machine with such great capabilities! Can I bring my next set of wheels/tires up to you?

    PS. I put 17x8.5 wheels and 245-45x17 tires and my '57 Nomad is sitting TOO LOW even before I get all the part on it. I think I'm going to have to go with a higher profile tire to get it 'right for me'...
    Originally I wanted to run 255/50-17 27 inch tall tires all around, but there is only like 2 tire choices to pick from, instead of 40+ for the 275/40-17 which are about 1.3 inches shorter at 26.7. I'm pretty sure the taller tire would have been an issue in the front anyway.
    I'm trying to maximize traction the circle of traction in all 3 directions. Accelerate, turn, and STOP.
    Last edited by 55 Rescue Dog; 09-05-2020 at 04:42 PM.

  6. #6
    Registered Member Belair-o's Avatar
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    Wow! That is quite the well equipped shop you have, and very neat and clean! Very nice.

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