Dodge Challenger Wheel Weights Round Out The Field

It's an epidemic folks: new muscle cars seem to be afflicted with difficult-to-balance wheels. First, it was the Camaro, then the Mustang, and now we can add the Challenger to the list.

We realize this story line is getting a bit ridiculous, they are just wheel weights after all, but in the interest of fairness we figured we should point out that horsepower isn't the only place in the muscle car wars these three cars compete. Nope, it's the hefty load of wheel balancing weights as well.

One theory put forth has been the addition of the government mandated tire pressure monitoring system, which requires a pressure transducer and a wireless transmitter mounted inside the wheel, making this excessive amount of wheel weight necessary. This could reasonably be the case, but relying on tire techs to properly place weights to balance a wheel introduces too much variability for our engineering tastes. The TPMS mandate has been in the pipe for a long time now, so one would imagine the added heft of the module would be offset in the design of the actual wheel.

Or, it could have nothing to do with the TPMS system. Could just be a condition of huge wheels on low profile tires and delicate NVH requirements. We'll get to the bottom of things... eventually. Hey, the weekend is coming up and we've got wrenches to turn. (Thanks for the picture Brett)

Send an email to Ben, the author of this post, at ben@jalopnik.com.

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