Pull away from the City Hospital site towards Smethwick and a wheel that is out of balance announces itself through the steering. The balancer comes to your B18 street rather than the other way round.
Driving round here is stop and start, hemmed between the prison wall, the Metro line and the terraces, and that hides a bad balance completely. The A457 Dudley Road heading for Oldbury gives you the first proper run, and the longer stretches of the A4040 Outer Circle do the same, which is where a wheel starts hammering. Kerb knocks on the Brookfields and Gib Heath streets are what throws a weight off.
Nothing needs driving to a workshop, because the machine is carried in the back of the fitter's van. Each wheel is lifted off, spun up, read, and given the weights the readout calls for, then bolted back to the correct torque. Mention which seat or which side of the steering you can feel it through, and name the Winson Green street or the hospital car park where the car waits. Costs are agreed beforehand.
A B18 terrace with room at the side, whether that is off Foundry Road or Winson Green Road, a Gib Heath driveway, or a City Hospital bay if the barrier staff wave the van through. Not in a Dudley Road bus lane, and not where the Outer Circle narrows.
| Near | City Hospital site, Dudley Road, HMP Birmingham, Winson Green Outer Circle tram stop |
|---|---|
| Typical arrival | A long run from London: allow 2 to 3 hours |
About wheel balancing nationwide → · Wheel balancing on the Winson Green page
Fresh tyres should always be balanced, and so should a wheel that has just had a puncture repaired, since the patch adds weight inside the casing. A missing clip-on weight leaves a clean mark on the rim worth checking for. None of this is wheel alignment, which we do not carry out; a car drifting across its lane on Dudley Road needs a garage rig, not a balancer.
Wheels balanced beside the kerb in Winson Green, B18, without the car leaving the street.
