Question about balancing tires

My brother recently balanced his tires on his 3 series. However, there are these ugly weights/clips strapped to the outside of his rims. I was thinking of getting my tires balanced but I can't imagine my nice rims all uglied up with weights. Do all tire places use these ugly weight clips? Or are there other ways of balancing a tire?

It is easy, whenever you have your wheels balanced just tell them to put the weights inside the wheel and not on the outer rim, it is as easy as that !!!!!!!!!!

Stealer and high end shops will not use the clips.

If this is what keeps you up at night, I'm jealous.

Just tell the shop not to use clip-on weights. Most good shops will only use stick-on weights but it does not hurt to specify stick-on only.

Ask for glue/tape weights.

I highly recommend a "Road Force Balance". I have a Miata as well, and they are known to be hyper sensitive to wheel balance issues. If you get it road force balanced, they can balance each wheel to only apply a pound or three of road force (pull basically) and is 'spread' around the car correctly, result in a very neutral balance job. I always look for a shop that uses this machine (no affiliation) http://www.gsp9700.com/ and then tell them to not only use glue/tape weights, but to also report the road force per wheel so that they know I'm interested in the best possible balance. My last time I got 1lb (LF), 2lb (RF), 4lb (LR, and 3lb (RR). This took a shimmy I had a 68 mph and got rid of it. I've never seen a car so susceptible to balance than a Miata. Typical balance jobs are supposedly only to about 20-35lb of road force. Because they match the tire to the point on the rim that is best balanced, it also results in a lot fewer weight being used.