[Crazy_pilot]

The uniformity method is something I rarely used back in my tire mounting days, mainly because new wheels are infrequently marked, and I seldom had time to examine old wheels for any indications.

I don't know how true the weight matching method is, for a couple of reasons:

1. If the valve is meant to show the heaviest point on the wheel it should basically be randomly clocked around the wheel circumference, at least as much as is allowed by the spoke layout (for example, a 5 spoke wheel would only have 5 possible valve locations). This may be the case with steel wheels, but every aluminum/alloy wheel I've ever seen has the valve located at a point that is the same relative to other details on the wheel that are part of the casting process. On my BBS wheels the valve is two spokes to the left of the size marking on the wheel, every time. How can the balance of the wheel be known before the forging process is carried out?

2. I could often obtain a better balance by positioning the tire somewhere other than the alignment marks. I would always start using the valve to line the tire up, but if the balancer demanded an unacceptable amount of weight I would reposition the tire. The rate of occurrence was high enough that there was no clear indication that lining up the valve with the mark on the tire made any difference.