EFRue57

I found this information while looking around and thought I'd share. I haven't tried it yet but probably will next time I get new tires to see how well it works.



"I know that some of you will think I'm crazy with this next one, but believe me, it works and works well. Every wheel that turns more than 20 miles per hour needs to be balanced or you will experience shaking that will ruin the tire and, in time, damage your vehicles suspension. When you get your typical car/truck tire balanced it costs around $10-$15 per tire. If the rim is steel, you have ugly lead wheel weights clipped to the rim. For those with aftermarket aluminum rims, you have to deal with ugly lead weight squares stuck to the rim with tape. These weights are not only unsightly, but they will damage the finish of your wheels, by promoting corrosion beneath the weight. Pull those weights in a couple years when you get new tires, and you're left with a corrosion "shadow" where the weight used to reside. There is a solution to lead weights. . .

Welcome to balancing beads. The weights are actually perfectly round beads that give you a custom balance every time you pull away from the curb. There are a couple ways you can balance your car's tires with beads. The commercial way is to buy balancing beads in a kit. I have a cheaper alternative: high density air-soft BBs!! The reason I use these BBs is simple; they're perfectly round, will not corrode (and go out of round which cause them not to be able to roll) and of course, they're cheap. If you buy one of these bottles of beads, you can balance 2 sets of tires (8 tires) for under $15.



Your typical car tire requires 3.5oz of beads. I used a postal scale to measure out 3.5oz and then places them into a zip-loc bag. I repeated that 3 more times until I had 4 bags with 3.5oz in each. Then when you have the tires mounted, tell the tire installers to simply pour one bag per tire in before they seat the tire bead on the rims with air. Once mounted to the rims, air the tires as normal. Mount them on your car and drive away happy.

NOTE: Many tire shops do not have separate charges for mounting/balancing, so of they don't have to balance the tires they'll mount them for free.

The way these work is simple;

- You start driving and at around 10-15mph, the beads are flung out by centrifugal force and are stuck to the inside of your tire.

- They roll around naturally distributing the weight evenly.

- Whenever your wheel tries to move up, the beads counter that movement by moving down momentarily.

- This constant countering of the wheel movement produces an incredibly smooth ride and is an active wheel balance system.

- When coming to a stop, the beads will stay in place until about 3-4mph. Below that they will simply fall to the bottom of the rim.

- Drive above 10-15mph and the process starts all over again. . .



So what are the advantages of balancing beads??

- No unsightly wheel weights on your stock or custom rims. This is a big deal on a show car or if you put a couple thousand $$$ into custom rims/tires.

- Never have to worry about loosing a wheel weight on a pot hole and having a wheel go out of balance. Again, a big deal when driving at high speeds

- A perfectly balanced wheel every time you pull away from a stop.

- Longer tread life due to better balanced wheel/tire assemblies. This is especially true of large tires on 4X4s which are notoriously difficult to balance and typically wear unevenly or "cup" as they wear.

This active balancing will even counter for the weight of gravel that gets momentarily stuck in your treads!! Like a I said earlier, I know some of you are saying, "He's certifiably nuts!!" Well that point IS debatable, but this actually does work and works well. I have done this to all my cars over the past 3 years upon the installation of new tires and I have never experienced a single balance issue. This includes my prized 1975 Porsche 914 that sees speeds in excess of 100mph and some pretty extreme driving conditions!!

WARNING: NEVER use tire sealer like Fix-O-Flat or Slime in your tires once the beads are installed. This will inhibit them from being able to roll freely and actively balance the wheel. These products will cause the beads to clump together and severely un-balance the wheel."

CrAzE191st

sounds like it would work, will definitely try it

si.hatch

on paper that sounds very logical, might have to try that one day

toyomatt84

iTrader: (1)

Well, sadly, unless there's a friction-less environment it won't work. As you accelerate the beads will roll and tend to gather on the backside of the tire. They will not accelerate at the same pace as the rotation of the tire, and not be actively on the contact patch.

H22Ej1

in addition i dont think many tire shops would put those in the tire for you...the possibility of the beads causing excess heat in the tire and banging around could lead to inner tire damage would definitely be a big drawback....pay the 40 dollars and balance the wheels with tape weights if your concerned about the look, many places also include free lifetime balancing if you purchase the tires through the shop.

EFRue57

I guess maybe you missed this part of the post.

EFRue57

how would these cause heat? explain please. also do you really think the beads will cause more damage than the road surface, rocks, gravel, ect, that the outside of the tires drive on every day? if the outside of the tires can handle thousands of miles of rough surface contact through every day driving, I don't think that these smooth surface beads will cause damage to the inside of the tire. just my .02.

toyomatt84

iTrader: (1)

Considering there's no relevance to my post, I don't see why it would matter if I missed that part of the information or not. The concept of a rolling mass changes drastically when FRICTION is applied. Whether or not it's perfectly round, is irrelevant.

Want to see my statement in action? Grab a hamster ball and throw some of these bb's in it. Roll it down a handicap ramp, and watch the bb's all gather on the backside of the ball, completely off of the contact patch.

EFRue57

calm down man. I seriously thought you might have missed that part of the post and did not mean what I said in a sarcastic manner. you said that the ***** will tend to roll to the back. i simply posted up the part where the ***** go out of round which makes them tend not to roll, so that it where i saw relevance. sorry if that was not the main reasoning of your post but that's just what I got out of it at first. obviously you were trying to make a point about friction. my bad.

also at low speeds, yes the ***** will clump in one spot, but after higher speeds the centrifugal force will separate them around the inner diameter of the tire.

here's a video demonstration on how it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq263AYgyYg

EFRue57

another video of how they work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skY6q...eature=related

toyomatt84

iTrader: (1)

I can see it being useful in a situation where constant motion is applied (ie. truck driving across the country). But, with a vehicle that sees heavy braking and low speed turning, I can see it causing unusual tire wear and handling characteristics as the vehicle is required to change pace drastically.

si.hatch

looks like proof enough for me

H22Ej1

the inside of a tire is not meant to survive in those conditions, it is a much softer rubber and more pliable and more influenced by heat. adding bb's will increase the temperatures the inside rubber may see (the beads will heat up due to friction and hitting each other/walls of the tire etc) couple that with the added abrasive impacts from the beads in a system that is absolutely not designed to handle it. here is a simple example on the fragility of a tires inner rubber. if you drive on a low pressure street tire ~10-15psi or so for a small distance at a speed of about 30-45 mph the inner liner will begin to break down due to the increased heat and friction from the small amount of sidewall flexure from the pressure being low.

another thing completely not taken into account here is that tires are not completely smooth on the interior. many incorporate small ribs, bumps, or raised patterns that will certainly affect the motion of the bbs.

could this system work on a tire with interior rubber designed for it? possibly.

would i trust this method on my cars tires?
hell no ill spend 40 bucks to know my tires wont fail.

edit: just watched the second video and a ring incorporating the bb's is a much better idea than just letting them sit free in the tire. however i agree with toyomatts post that this system will be most effective in a near constant motion situation

Markley02

Did you actually watch the video? I love the "stobe light" part! Thats not a stobe light at all. It is just someone flicking a switch while the machine isn't running at all. Plus I like the part at the end when they start to spin it up with no magnet. They had to cut out a part of the video because it wasn't balancing.

EFRue57

okay don't take this the wrong way, i'm not saying this in an arguementive way, but just wanting facts, do you have any info or links to concur with what you're saying? I used to work for a company that manufactured rubber parts, materials, ect, and I do not see it being feasible that the duro of the outside rubber to be different from the duro of the inside rubber.

all of those little stringy things on the outside of the tire when you buy them brand new are the injection points where the rubber is injected into the tire mold when they are being manufactured. those injection points are not on the inside of the tire which means that two different types of rubber were not used and that the inside will not be softer than the outside.

also, let's just say in theory that two different types were used, when the rubber is injected in is heated up to a high temperature and it is almost an oatmeal like texture (sorry only thing I could think of to compare it too at the moment) meaning the two different types of rubber being injected would mix together.

I could keep going on in detail about what affects that would have but this post has been wordy enough. so in regards to the heat issue, i still think the outside surface of the tires making contact with the road will cause more heat and friction than the ***** on the inside of the tire. and unless you can show some sort of information supporting your theory that the inside rubber's duro is softer than the outside, i don't think your statement will hold water.

EFRue57

if the machine wasn't running, the beads would all have been sitting at the bottom, not spread out over the diameter of the tube they are in. also yes the camera does cut away, but if you watch the tire right before the cut away, there is no balancing issue.

H22Ej1

uh tires are made with numerous types of rubber at different areas throughout the tire and they contain much more than just rubber. the inner liner is almost nearly exclusively made from halobutyl rubber because it is air tight. no other component of the tire uses this type of rubber because its properties are not fit to serve their purpose. the sidewall and outer tread components are made up of carbon black, and polybutadiene along with small amounts of other materials to get a tire to act/handle/wear a certain way. the carbon black supplies reinforcement and abrasion resistance (something that the halobutyl rubber does not fair well against) and the polybutadiene is used for its low heat build up properties, silica is used for this purpose as well.

in addition a tire is not simply created of rubber injected into a mold it is built up on a tire building drum. they start with the inner liner and finish off with the tread. after the tire is built up on a drum it is placed in a mold to cure to take on the proper sidewall lettering and tread pattern.

i wish i could search for a more valid source at this point but im already late for work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_manufacturing

edit: as far as personal experience i have worked for a tire company for 3+ years

EFRue57

k, that link will suffice for me, I stand corrected. still though, truckers, motorcyclists, and others use these on a regular basis, plus the guy i got the info from using them for over three years on his vehicles is proof enough for me to still have faith in them. but everyone will have their own opinion. thanks for correcting me though on the tire issue though.

nsxtasy

This is about the dumbest thing I've read in this forum in a long time.

It's also a solution to something that isn't even a problem; normal tire balancing procedures and products work just fine. If you don't like the look of tire weights that clamp onto the edge of your rims, get the ones that stick onto the inside barrel of the wheel. (And don't go ranting about a "corrosion shadow" on the inside of the wheel were no one can see it, LOL!!!)

EFRue57

I never said it was a problem, I was giving a possible cost saving alternative. and if you really think this is the dumbest posts you've seen in a while, how about I go find one of the multiple, "What do I need to put a B series motor in my civic" or "How do I put rear disc brakes on my car" threads I see on a daily basis?

Sorry for trying to give new information that isn't something that is just repeated over and over again.