The Little Dot on tire
- Thread starter Lubener
- Start date
Sometimes there's a red and a yellow, forget which one is which. One is the lightest spot of the tire (to be lined up with the valve stem). And one is the high point on the tire.
A good tire installer will spin a bare wheel to check for run-out and mark the high or low spots. If a tire has match mounting dots, the tire should be mounted accordingly. If not, the installer can use Road Force to check the amount force a wheel/tire assembly exerts on the road at the highest radial deviation. They will make their own marks and move the tire around until the least amount of force is achieved. Takes time and skill, but will produce the smoothest rolling, least wearing wheel/tire assembly.
I thought by now that tires would have very little variation or high spots in manufacturing to the point of almost being 100 percent balanced.
Our ability to measure uniformity and imbalance far exceeds our ability to manufacture uniform and balanced tires. A great amount of improvement has been made, but the manufacturing of tires is so complex, there are a lot of opportunities for non-uniformity and imbalance to enter.
And one other comment: There is no consistency between tire manufacturers as to what the dots mean - or even if the dots are there or not!
Further, wheel manufacturers don't routinely mark their wheels. The OEM's do specify the wheels and tires have to be marked for uniformity, but each OEM requires different marks and wheels are typically marked with a removeable sticker.
Correct!
On some new vehicles you can see what has been done. There will be a small circular red sticker on the wheel and the corresponding red dot on the tire will be lined up.
I mounted the new nexen tires on my 65 VW bug. Lined the yellow dot up with the valve stem when I mounted them. They have no added weights on them and none are needed All is smooth at 75 mph. By the way I mounted all my tires with the wheels still on the car. Original wheels have enough drop in the center to allow easy removal.
Nah. We've had several threads about expensive new tires being out-of-round and impossible to balance. This seemed to be a big problem during the pandemic.
I recently took the plunge and purchased a Chinese wheel balancer off Amazon. It told me to put the weights exactly where the dealerships Hunter Road Force machine had them. Hopefully they at least match mounted the wheel to the tire way back when, but its hard to find anyone to use the machine the way it's intended, rather than just do a regular spin balance and charge you for the RFB instead.
Had 4 tires installed on the Tiguan's 20" wheels this past week. My shop and installer have a 2 year old Hunter tire machine and balancer with Road Force which was recently calibrated. After old tires came off, the wheels were spun to check for run-out, bends etc. Surprisingly, all 4 spun very true, but whatever high spots were detected got marked. Tires are Continental DWS 06+ A/S in 255/45-20 and were installed touch free with the Hunter. Road Forced and balanced. Worst wheel/tire was 96 lbs. of RF and needed 3.5 ozs total weight, best was 33 lbs. and needed 3oz. Wheels and tires were all marked according to the spots indicated by the Hunter machine and tires were repositioned so the marks lined up (tires had no dots). The initial high spot marks on the wheels were in the exact same spots the Hunter machine showed. All 4 now ranged from 12-23 lbs. and each wheel took 1.5 oz. or less of total weight. Took some time, but the RF works if its used properly. Wheels/tires roll super smooth on the car as a result. Totally worth the $ and trouble.
Never knew what those dots meant. Now I do. Thanks BITOGER'S 
.... The next set of tires I have installed I will make sure the installer lines up that dot with the stem. Clean rims make a huge difference in balancing also. I always get the brake dust and asphalt chunks cleaned off before I have tires installed. Just use brake cleaner and a bunch of shop rags to clean them up prior to balancing, and I take off all the weights. I've noticed in the past, some installers just keep adding more weights on top of the existing weights. Haven't had a bad balance since I started doing those 2 procedures.
.... The next set of tires I have installed I will make sure the installer lines up that dot with the stem. Clean rims make a huge difference in balancing also. I always get the brake dust and asphalt chunks cleaned off before I have tires installed. Just use brake cleaner and a bunch of shop rags to clean them up prior to balancing, and I take off all the weights. I've noticed in the past, some installers just keep adding more weights on top of the existing weights. Haven't had a bad balance since I started doing those 2 procedures.definitely not. The cheaper the tyre, the harder to balance in my experience. And same goes for wheels.
That's the hyundai way. Replacement tyres don't come with dots on them in euroe, but it doesn't matter anyway as the red sticker on the wheel will be gone, and it's not at the valve stem anyway.
Just an FYI:
Not all tires are marked and there is no standardization as to what the marks mean.
Besides, nowadays, wheel manufacturers don't use the valve hole to mark for anything. Most of the time the valve hole is halfway between spokes. In the past, some car manufacturers used to have the wheel manufacturers mark the low point of run out with the valve hole, but that hasn't been true for quite some time.
So don't be surprised if you get pushback on aligning the dots. The tire installers know what I just said, so they also know it doesn't do much of anything.
The dots on my Pirelli's P7 AS+2 lined up with valve stem at install was great. I was able to go back to Sam's and complain about them using too much lubricant as the front tires of my 4 cyl Accord spun on the rim. One by 180 degrees, the other either 90 or 270. Pictures from install day and 3 days later after road trip. No we didn't accelerate fast or brake hard and yes the car sat for about 18 hours after tires were installed. 
2 days after the trip, crater pothole, bubbled sidewall, bent rim. Road hazard covered the tire, I had rim repaired.
Really sucked on NY > MO > NY 3 day road trip. Started vibrating somewhere around Ohio or Indiana, during Covid, nowhere to go that would rebalance (called many DT's and others). Fortunately the tires used very little weights to start so it was just a really annoying vibration not heavy shaking but trying to sleep was nauseating.
2 days after the trip, crater pothole, bubbled sidewall, bent rim. Road hazard covered the tire, I had rim repaired.Really sucked on NY > MO > NY 3 day road trip. Started vibrating somewhere around Ohio or Indiana, during Covid, nowhere to go that would rebalance (called many DT's and others). Fortunately the tires used very little weights to start so it was just a really annoying vibration not heavy shaking but trying to sleep was nauseating.
Kestas
Staff member
As CapriRacer stated, the meaning of the dots is not standardized. Long time ago I poked on line and found a site that listed the meaning of the dots by manufacturer.
