Balancing Beads.This has been covered before but here are my thoughts: As a self-confessed clean freak, the thought of not having to plaster those ugly wheel weights on any side of my shiny black wheels was very appealing. A friend recommended using balancing beads instead. He has never tried them but he has a friend that swears by them. Yeah right!! Do they work? This is what you get. Beads by the ounce, applicator bottle and tube. Depending on the tires size the weight will vary. The manufacturer told me how much to add in a 500/525 X 16 tire. In this case 4 ounces. They also told me how many ounces per inch the bottle will hold. Marked at the 4 ounce mark, I am ready to "bead' Because I have tubes on this car I installed this washer and part of a valve stem cap to make sure the valve stem does not fall in to the tires when I remove the valve. The blue tape on the washer is to protect my newly powder coated wheels from any scratches. That's just how I roll OK... Totally Tubular...as in tube installed. Add beads... The beads will easily jam if you pour them in too fast. The manufacturer told me to use a vibrating tool such as an engraver to help the beads in to the stem. I went thru the house looking for anything that vibrates. NO, I did not look in my wife's night stand. This sonic tooth brush did the trick. From this you can already draw a few conclusions: 1. I like to drive my hot rods fast and smooth. 2. I practice good oral hygiene. Well, did it work? I think so...funny how one can be so sceptical over something different...the car feels very smooth, though. The vibration is not present in the steering wheel and that is a good sign. I can still feel vibration in the seat, so I will do the rear tires next and see how that improves the drive. Just like Ryan's test I have to say I have no association with this company. I need to straighten a rear wheel and then I will "bead" them too and report to follow. <TABLE dir=ltr border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
I've been thinking about using them myself. The beads, not the vibrating tool. Thanks for the update!
thanx for posting this, did you drive the car before adding the beads so you would have something to compare it to? just wondering.
Been using the beads for quite awhile in the Plymouth... LOVE them! I was having the problem when squirrling around of spinning the tires on the wheels, therefore killing balance with regular weights. Not good! These have saved the day. I have a better way of installing them though. Go to any 1.00 store and buy a set of plastic multi sized funnels. The smallest will "thread" right over the end of any valve stem. Slowly pour them in and tap the stem with something soft as you pour. Keep a bit of .030 welding wire toclear stuff if you goof up, but do one and the rest will be easy. Try it on your rears, it's ten times easier than the other method.
Indeed, I did have a noticable "back and forth" motion in the steering wheel at 100 mph...ahem, 60 !! I meant SIXTY!!...and that is gone. Is it better than a on car static and dynamic balance? I don't know. I will get the rears done soon and get more of a complete test.
Did you tell the manufacturer the tires have inner tubes? Are the beads heavy? The light color gives the impression that they are light.
I've seen a lot of this stuff used in semi trucks while working at Les Schwab. It seems to do the trick.
Very popular with the offroad crowd, as most of the mud tires are a bitch to balance. I used these in a set of my mud tires and the smoothed them right out.
No, they are very "dense" and heavy. The white coating makes them "slick" and that is probably by design so they go where they are supposed to. Yes, they knew it was going in tubes, no prob per them.
Well, thanks for that. Grats to your pick at the GG show, well deserved. I think it was the best GG ever.
This is a proven concept that has been used in many different applications. The biggest down side of doing it in car tires is that the ballance effect is disturbed any time any time the car slows, accelerates, or turns. Following that it takes a short time for the beads to restabilize where they need to be. "Regular" balancing doesn't have that problem, and can also correct for asymmetrical imbalance of the tire/wheel that beads cannot. If your tires are slipping on the wheel you either have a mismatch between the design of the wheel and tire bead, and/or you need screws to prevent it from happening. In any case, it's not safe to just accept it.
I had beads put in my front wheels on my T-bucket. Putting weights on wire wheels is always an issue. With new tubes installed and the old weights removed we added the specified bead load and took it for a drive. Wow, what a difference, no more shake, rattle and rroll. Now runs smooth as silk. I'll be doing the M/T tires in the rear soon as well. I'm no longer a skeptic...
Radial or bias, tires/wheels need what they need. That can change as the tire wears. Out of round and other tire imperfections can cause vibration just like imbalance does. There are balance machines that can factor that in and correct at least some of that with balance weights. Based on what you described, assuming the tires were balanced correctly to start with, and assuming the drums/rotors/hubs aren't bent or out of balance, I suspect the tires have imperfections that were helped by removing the weights.
a customer of mine at my garage tried this with lead beads in his landrover he says it works great we had a shit load of weights on it before and it still wobbled, smooth as a landrover can be now i am converted for sure just looking at getting the wholesale kits sorted from my supplier.
After doing an online search, it looks like it would cost about $75 to do a set of four tires(four ounces per tire), plus about $6 for the applicator. Are they worth that much? Do they extend the tire life? I could buy a fifth tire every time for the cost of the beads. Any long term users?
Something to think about; Auto manufacturers generally save every cost they think they can. If beads are as good or better than weights, why don't manufacturers just toss some beads into every tire instead of wasting the time, effort, and expense to balance them conventionally?
You can have a balancer that gets your tire/wheel combination down to 1/100 of an ounce but it doesn't balance the rotating assembly that the wheel bolts to. The beads or powder will balance the whole assembly.
I'm a daily driver only vehicle owner operator of a '49 Chevy half ton, been using the beads for 30k miles tires wearing perfectly, I'll never do weights again. BTW, 215 85R 16's on STOCK WHEELS, NO TUBES, no loss of air, ideal. Hard to buck 'what everyone else is doing' but then again not many of us are driving 63 year old steel/365. Regards, Cosmo
OK, so how are you going to figure out how many is just rite, to many or not enough? Experiment, to much work, these guy's have figured the formula for you!
Can anybody explain the science behind this? Does the rotation of the tire cause the beads to be distributed evenly and even out any imbalance in the wheel? Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
Can you use the beads and leave the lead weights on as well. Any advantiges or ill effects doing this?
My son's into Jeeps and mounts his own tires. He uses regular BBs, 6ozs in each of his 33"x12 tires, and swears by them. Only down side he's found is that sometimes when he stops he can hear them falling inside the tire. Maybe something like buckshot from a shooters supply might be better.
Looks like #4 or 6 lead shot would do the same thing. Looks like the rule of thumb is one oz. per thirteen pounds of tire. There are aplication charts on line.
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