My experience looking for wheel weights

[RogerDat]

Stretched out clip?
Well, ive been balancing tires for over a decade and that's why I have a hammer. All you gotta do is give it whack or two and bend the clips back in tight. You can FEEL if the weigh is stay or not when you out it on.

Which is why some shops re-use them. I think the law may exist because not every tire tech is competent or going to do it with care. I can see where over tweaking a piece of spring steel could weaken it or hitting it could weaken the bond of the lead to the clip. But you know how it is, if even a small percentage do something badly and someone gets hurt some politician has to do something about the "problem" so a law gets passed.

We had one state legislator try to ban certain breeds of dogs from the state because of a dog attack in his district. Imagine someone or a few people got hurt or had near misses from flying WW's and there you go. Or the lead manufactures lobbied for it and no one was paying attention. Be a good deal for them, when they are removed from the car the old ones get recycled into the new ones getting installed.

[Beesdad]

Common practice in NC for second tier tire shops to reuse WW's... IMO if I am purchasing a new set of tires I would expect new WW's. The vast majority of my WW's come from two independent first class tire shops and they have told me they would never reuse WW's. I would have to assume that kind of attitude has kept them in business for more than 35 years..

[ridenclimb]

konsole,

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with trying to get wheel weights. I had to ask at quite a few places before I found one that was willing to part with a few buckets for a reasonable price. Currently have a fair deal worked out with one of the shops. $30 for a five gallon bucket which is around 120#. If its filled all the way it is too heavy to move around. Anyway, between smelting wheel weights and also some range scrap which I get for free I come up with an alloy that works well for my purposes.

Anyway, good luck to all who would like to find some lead. It is out there.

[DrBill33]

Wheel weights? All that you want around here ... Oh yes! No-lead, but the now required non-lead (usually magnesium. I lucked ot with a fellow stock finisher that has a large quantity of lead wheel weights. With the EPA requirements, I am afraid that the days of lead wheel weights is long gone...DANG IT!

[konsole]

I've noticed the same thing about some shops saying they reuse the wheel weights. The suggestion to offer to clean the good condition steel and zinc weights sounds really good. If they take you up on that offer I have a hard time seeing they wont let you take the lead weights for free or extremely cheap, considering how much usable weights your bringing back to them. I've had decent luck with scrappers taking the steel weights off the street, but this most recent time the box of steel weights has been sitting there more then a week. So cleaning the steel and zinc would save me that trip to the scrap yard to get the $5 or $10 for them. I find that the steel and zinc weights combined amount to about 1/3 of a bucket so if half of those are reusable then thats about 20 pounds or so of weights they can reuse.

Does anyone do anything else with the steel WW's then bring them to the scrap yard?

I guess if you have a good size property you could throw them in a pile way out back and simply let them rust away.

[RogerDat]

I don't get much for steel weights at the scrap yard but since I am there anyway.... I get what I can for them.

[konsole]

I don't get much for steel weights at the scrap yard but since I am there anyway.... I get what I can for them.

What is it somewhere around .05 a pound for the steel weights? I'm tempted to just dig a hole and bury them in the back yard and let them rust away, if the idea of cleaning them and returning them to the shop doesnt work.

Have you tried selling zinc weights to the scrap yard? What do they give you?

[konsole]

I don't get much for steel weights at the scrap yard but since I am there anyway.... I get what I can for them.

What about the steel clips? Have you tried selling the steel clips to the scrap yard?

[RogerDat]

Never tried steel clips but yes they buy any scrap steel. They paid me scrap metal price for the old metal shelves from the garage.
I sold them some zinc ingots and they paid 46 cents a lb. took in some zinc WW's and I forget what they paid. Was only about 15 lbs. think it was less than I paid for them as WW's in the bucket

I checked with shadygrady and he was offering a little more in credit for goods from his gunbroker auction. But not enough more to make up for the shipping since I could purchase lead from the scrap yard with the money as soon as I got it.

[konsole]

So what did they give you per # for the scrap steel?

I'm not going to take 100# down there if I only get $5 for it. A couple hundred pounds would be pushing the limit for my car, and even that would only get $10 after I pay for gas, if they pay .05 cents a pound. Luckily it looks like the steel weights I put out on the street was finally taken by someone. As of now I've just been throwing the steel clips in a pile on our yard.

I wonder if the scrap yard would take the steel clips when they have a small amount of lead stuck to them?

[mold maker]

I have always taken the clips (yes a small amount of lead attached) to the scrap yard, with any other scrap steel, jackets, aluminum, copper, and brass. I always trade for lead instead of taking cash. It's like getting paid in lead, to carry out the trash. Ya gotta get rid if it eventually so might as well profit from it.

[konsole]

I have always taken the clips (yes a small amount of lead attached) to the scrap yard, with any other scrap steel, jackets, aluminum, copper, and brass. I always trade for lead instead of taking cash. It's like getting paid in lead, to carry out the trash. Ya gotta get rid if it eventually so might as well profit from it.

Trading your scrap steel for lead aint a bad idea, unless they really low ball your steel and our really high ball their lead.

[RogerDat]

Trading your scrap steel for lead aint a bad idea, unless they really low ball your steel and our really high ball their lead.

You just defined the scrap metal business. Buy low & sell high.

I think steels might be 7 or 10 cents a lb. but it varies depending on the market and region. All it takes is a phone call to find out what that 100 lb. bucket will fetch.

However since the steel clips are trash and one is going to the scrap yard anyway to see what they have for lead..... Might as well haul along the steel clips. $7.50 would have covered the 7.5 lbs. of body shop solder I picked up there.

[konsole]

I have a few more things to add after looking for wheel weights for a couple months.

Whatever the shop says about how quickly they fill a bucket, its pretty much a guarantee that they underestimate it. If they say it takes them about 1 month to fill the bucket then it will probably take 2+ months. Obviously it can vary quite a bit and they will probably fill the bucket in 2 months sometimes and maybe 3-4 months other times, but I've learned to be skeptical when they say something like 1 month if they arent a high volume tire only shop. A couple shops I have been back to 1 month later that said it takes 1-2 months to fill the bucket, and the bucket barely had 25 pounds in it.

At first I thought dealerships where good places for weights, but I've learned that if someone says you can take the weights then they are most likely going under the managers head. Out of all the dealerships I originally stopped at, 4 said I could take the weights, but from 2 of those the word has now come from higher up that they have something setup with a recycler. The 3rd one is a little too far of a drive and even though someone there said I could take the weights, I'll probably end up getting a no once someone in management is asked since the people working in the shop seem to often times not really know what happens to their used weights. So dealerships seem to always have some kind of recycling setup in place and wont consider giving or even selling the weights to you. The 4th place will still give me the weights, but they arent asking management first.

It seems to be the same thing with tire shop chains. Every tire shop chain store I have been in they have a setup in place where a recycler comes in and takes the weights and when I asked them if it was chain wide they said yes. Single location tire shops are good though, as well as single location general auto repair shops that do tire work.

[el34]

A tip I learned here over a year ago is to check yellowpages.com for "used tires". You'll get small mom-pop tire places that don't have recycler agreements and will often sell you their WW. I needed my own buckets at two of them and my own scale at one, he priced them by the pound.

The % of lead, whether SO or CO, is constantly going down. My last 100+ pound bucket cost me $60 but by the time I smelted the lead my ingot cost was $1.02/lb. I waffle between moaning about it and continually scoring more, the price will probably never go down.

[konsole]

My last 100+ pound bucket cost me $60 but by the time I smelted the lead my ingot cost was $1.02/lb.

$60 for that much is really high. Maximum I hear people consistently getting a full bucket is $20 and if its overflowing then $25. Atleast find out what the local scrap yard would give them for the scrap weights and use that when haggling a price at the shop. If your having to pay $60 to beat someone elses offer, then I would go elsewhere if you can.

[cdngunner]

Prices up here are $0.35/lbs of mixed wheel weights. I usually go out with a scale and a printout of current scrap prices.

For scrap lead I usually offer about $0.50/lbs.


I am just across the river from Buffalo NY and find the prices there about double.

[konsole]

cdngunner,

0.35/lb for mixed weights isnt too bad. I would be comfortable offering that if I really liked the place, or they where very very close to me, or I discovered that their buckets contained an unusually high percentage of lead weights.

[flyingmonkey35]

I hit up my fav local shop the other day when getting my oil changed and tries rotated.

Yup I'm to dam lazy to do it myself.

Picked up one 5 gal bucket of mixed ww and stuff tire stems etc..

$35.bucks

Last time I went to the local recycling place they upped the price to .50cents a pound.

I think I'll stick to the shop.

[Geezer in NH]

Common practice in NC for second tier tire shops to reuse WW's... IMO if I am purchasing a new set of tires I would expect new WW's. The vast majority of my WW's come from two independent first class tire shops and they have told me they would never reuse WW's. I would have to assume that kind of attitude has kept them in business for more than 35 years..

The big question should be "Do you put in new air stems every time?"