72 Mercury Comet GT in Germany

I‘m running a Borgeson setup. 3 1/8‘‘ shims on the front bolt on each side.

 

Tody
Good to hear from you. I don't know if this will help, but there are plastic rings made in an array of sizes that will make a custom wheel hub-centric on the car. These are to take up a custom bore vs hub diameter gap. Using these, they don't hold the weight of anything, per se, but they make the guy installing the wheel "perfect" in that the wheel is now centered as the lugs are torqued down. These can fix a lot of vibration problems when using custom wheels. I don't know if somehow these can also be adapted to your balancer. I sell tires now, but I started in 1980 and the technology changes along the way have been pretty cool to watch.

Like Blugene, I was chasing a vibration in a 1998 Explorer Sport for a long time. The shake was at around 70 mph. It ended up being a bent wheel. At speeds above and below that, it was smooth. That was a real drill finding it. There was a Technical Service Bulletin from Ford talking about the need to loosen motor mounts and cycle the truck back and forth on loose mounts to get the motor to settle where it should be. Then checking driveshaft angles. A lot of head-scratching and finally stumbled on the bent wheel.

I now have a 2010 Explorer Sport Trac pickup. There is a vibration at 62 mph .... (aaargh!) It came with some nice Nitto tires and they are half worn and feel like they flat spot a bit when cold. I haven't experienced THAT in years. I'll be looking for a bent rim again, probably before replacing the tires in the next year. It may be square tires by now, too. LOL.

 

Good to see so many familiar faces replying to this thread

Jeff, the vibration has gotten a lot better since addressing the issues mentioned above.
I think it was a combination of many issues, the wheel balance surely being one of the bigger things.
Also, positioning the weights on the outside lip instead of the center made the balance more precise.
Not pretty, but works better.

Over the last few years, I have taken this hobby much more seriously and with a different approach.
Instead of just throwing parts at any given problem, I tend to think the problems through...

The balancing machine I have is your run of the mill cheap china-made machine.
Using a screw-in shaft with cones to hold the wheels which can be swapped out to use an adapter which can be set to the specific bolt pattern.
The adapter comes with metric threads and conical lug nuts though, so I cannot bolt down the wheel with shank lug nuts.
What we're trying to do is fab some pieces on the lathe that will go into a mustang wheel hub instead of the bearings, to use that instead of the cones.

 

I’m running the Borg also, with 2 1/8” shims, was able to get little over 3+ degrees each side, knowing what I know now, should have also added another one would have been better for wheel centering/return on corners. Driving it lik that several years, leaving as is.