BB balancing tires

[IsaacCarlson]

I have had no trouble with the beads collecting rubber.

Since the balls balance the tires as you drive, there is no critical speed. They start working at ~12 mph and stop at ~8 mph. If you are getting vibration, you have a worn part, incorrect weight in the tire, or a lot of lateral imbalance. I have traced all vibration to worn parts or a defective tire when the correct amount of weight is used.

As for wear, the rim is just fine, but the bb's lose their copper jacket in the form of dust and small flakes. This could cause some imbalance, but it is less than .1 oz, so most likely not. Either bb's are not round before the copper is put on, or they wear down from rubbing on each other in the tire when at low speed. They were round, but had a small nub or point on at least one end. I want to say it was from manufacturing, but I have no basis for that reasoning other than there seems to be a factory seam directly between the nubs on every bb.

It is amazing how fast those little balls are spinning at 10 mph before sticking to the tire. 19,000 rpm! That is, if they are truly rolling inside the tire and not bouncing.

We will see how the plastic bb's do. I have only seen rust on bb's that were in a tire with a bit of water for more than a few months. The dry tires had no rust on the bb's.

[roosterk0031]

The worst tires I had as far as balancing were Ecopias IIRC they had small internal ribs that I think the counteract pellets would get caught on and not balance out if I hit a good pot hole in that 10-15 mph range and wouldn't go away till the next stop. The larger size of BB's they may not even notice those ribs.

I have used them in 6 cars for combined +300,000 miles. Largest tire 226-60-16, mostly 196-65-15. Haven't had a shop mount a tire since the Suburban before the Impala as I didn't want to do that size of tire on the Harbor Freight Changer.

On the 2 Cobalts and Impala I add 1.5 oz of stick on lead opposite the valve stem/tpms sensor, before doing that they didn't seem to balance out quite as well. Didn't at first but learned it worked better with a little lead. Close to 200,000 miles with counteract beads on those 3 cars alone.

Put 800 miles on the Impala Saturday and it occasionally doesn't balance out perfect, it has Nitto Sn2 winter shoes on it yet and don't recall what the inside surface is like.

[IsaacCarlson]

I am hoping the larger bb's will roll over the ribs better than the small ones.

As for tires on the HF tire changer, The bigger tires are easier to work with. All tires need some good lube to mount and dismount any time you do it. My 235 85 16 truck tires are a snap on the HF changer with good lube. I run 25-30% dish soap in water and it works great. The smaller car tires are harder to do, but not real bad. I just changed out 7 truck tires 2 days ago in no time. The hardest part was lifting the 75+lb beasts onto the changer. I have it bolted to a pallet to make it portable and that is awesome.

[redpoint5]

How would I go about putting BBs inside the tire? I'm guessing they won't fit through the valve stem, so would I have to pop a bead?

Is the noise of BBs falling when coming to a stop very loud? If so, that isn't acceptable to me. Perhaps the hub of the wheel could have some foam attached, or some spray in latex or something to dampen the noise.

The antifreeze idea sounds even better though. No noise, and it's cheap. Could probably fit it through a valve easily too. Any drawbacks to using antifreeze instead of BBs or other round objects?

[sendler]

Counteract balancing beads are reasonably priced and available at NAPA or other autoparts stores. I bought an 8 oz bag for $13 unlike Dynabeads which want to sell you a 2x2 oz kit for $30. I thought about using bb's but these are so cheap, why not use the real thing. They are small enough to go in through the tire valve.
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I put 1 oz in the front and 1.5 in the back of my 110 and 140 motorcycle tires after static balancing them with weights. I wouldn't say it is smooth as glass but it definitely didn't make anything worse.

[ConnClark]

Why isn't this in the Unicorn corral?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by ConnClark

Why isn't this in the Unicorn corral?

Because dynamic balancing is science, and not myth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ullnFQD4F1I

[sendler]

Dynabead demo video.
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https://youtu.be/eq263AYgyYg
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[roosterk0031]

Never tried antifreeze, but have seen the Ride on motorcycle tire sealer balancer so tried using regular Slime in a couple car tires, didn't notice out of balance for a while but they didn't wear very well and had to replace while they still had quite a bit of rubber left.

I get an out of balance situation about once every 2 weeks with my cobalt using counteract beads. Sometimes it will go away at speed other times it persist until the next stop. Happens occasionally with the Impala as well. I wonder if happens more often now than in the past is the contamination of the beads as I've used them in multiple tires.

I've never experience a shake with KT's cobalt or the Altima but don't drive them that often, both are on the first tire change and new beads. I might have to give up and buy new beads next change or come up with a way to clean them.

[redpoint5]

Try the antifreeze and report back here!

I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to try since I have some laying around that will probably never get used. It should be easy to remove the tire cores and syphon fluid in with some clear tubing.

How much fluid should I use in a wheel that already has balance weights on it?