Tell me about tire beads

notjustair

Well-known Member
It was time for the good car to get new tires. It has low profile rims. I've never had good luck with the stick on weights. I had them put beads in the tires to balance. I have never used these before. It seems like the car has a little bit of shake to it when you first reach highway speed. I think it is getting better as they get some miles on them but I am not sure. I'm not quite sure I understand how they work, though. Has anyone had any experience with them?
 
They are supposed to be used in conjunction with another form of balancing, not as the sole form. They are popular for large knobby tires that are hard to keep balanced. I've run them before...was not impressed.
 
(quoted from post at 15:13:00 08/03/15) It was time for the good car to get new tires. It has low profile rims. I've never had good luck with the stick on weights. I had them put beads in the tires to balance. I have never used these before. It seems like the car has a little bit of shake to it when you first reach highway speed. I think it is getting better as they get some miles on them but I am not sure. I'm not quite sure I understand how they work, though. Has anyone had any experience with them?

I have used them on semi truck tires and as far as I could tell, they didn't help at all. I never could understand how they worked and to be honest the tires wore more unevenly with the beads in them than without. The only way that I have found to wear steer tires out before they get dipped out and start shimmying is to spin balance them with lead weights. Not sure if I helped or not..
 
Over the years I put them in hundreds of truck tires. I cannot remember a single complaint. We did a few car and truck tires too when people did not want weights to show on the rims. We purchased a new balancer that allowed us to install, the weights on the back side of the rims and were able to balance all car and lt truck tires without using the beads.
 
I've used them in truck tires too, but found I needed twice as many as they suggested to work well.
 
Dangerous for motorcycles, silly for everything else. Try cleaning your rims with MEK before placing stick-ons, and balance every 20K miles and you will be fine.
 
I tried this last fall on some winter tires, and kept playing with the amount of beads and never came up with a combination that worked, and the car never stopped shaking until I removed all the beads, and had them balanced with lead weights. I wasted a lot of time messing with it, but I had to try it, hoping I could mount/balance my own tires (at least with the steel rims) and save some $$, but was not to be. Best of luck getting it to give a smooth ride, as I never could.
 
I'm thinking all the dynamic balancing things don't work. Why would centrifugal force place the beads at the point in the tire that needs to be heavier. Theres no way it is going to just rest in the light spot . In my mind those beads can't work. Something to spin inside your tire is all it is going to do.
 
Were it not for gadgets and snake oil remedies like the balancing beads, and for the gullible folks who buy them, J. C. Whitney would have closed its doors decades ago.
 
Around 1980 JC Whitney was in financial trouble and an article in automotive news stated the a failure of JC Whitney would put more small American companies out of bis then a failure of Chrysler.
 
At about this time, or maybe it was 1981, J.C. Whitney declared bankruptcy. Now this was the time before internet or the "instant news" that we have today. So how do I know this?
Because they sent me a refund check that BOUNCED. The bank notified me that the check was no good because they declared bankruptcy. They quickly reorganized and stayed in business, but of course I never got my money back from them.
 
I have used them, they work fine. Only time the beads didnt work was after I broke a belt, the egg shape was just too much to overcome. I kept adding beads and would overcome it for a while till the belt slipped more and then I would get a shake again. Replaced the tire, added beads and all was well again.

I used airsoft BBs, enough to do tires for the rest of your life for about $10. You can find the load charts online.

With the low profile tires that are extra wide, you need to put more beads in if you feel it out of balance.

I love these threads because the people that scream the loudist that they dont work are the people that have never used them or dont understand how they work. I have even had a friend riding in my truck telling me about this "new crazy idea" he heard about that would never work... little did he know that I had beads 2 of the tires while he was telling me it couldnt work.

If you want to know how it works, hit google or youtube, plenty of info explaining it, not everybody is able to understand it though.
 
Although an out-of-balance tire might ride smoother after adding snake-oil beads, that's not the same as actually balancing the tire. If you have something loose rolling and bouncing around inside your tire, it's going to absorb energy. The effect isn't much different than touching your finger to a vibrating guitar string; it will stop vibrating simply because you're removing energy from the string. Of course the energy in a vibrating tire is supplied by the gas you buy, so using snake-oil beads rather than properly balancing the tire will incur a small gas mileage penalty.

No, I don't understand the bogus explanations given by the snake-oil peddlers. That's probably because I'm a degreed engineer and there's no physics behind their lame explanations.
 
(quoted from post at 20:48:14 08/03/15) Although an out-of-balance tire might ride smoother after adding snake-oil beads, that's not the same as actually balancing the tire. If you have something loose rolling and bouncing around inside your tire, it's going to absorb energy. The effect isn't much different than touching your finger to a vibrating guitar string; it will stop vibrating simply because you're removing energy from the string. Of course the energy in a vibrating tire is supplied by the gas you buy, so using snake-oil beads rather than properly balancing the tire will incur a small gas mileage penalty.

No, I don't understand the bogus explanations given by the snake-oil peddlers. That's probably because I'm a degreed engineer and there's no physics behind their lame explanations.

Like I said, I love these topics because the people that dont understand how they work start telling others that have done it that... it wont work.... I love it.

The only think missing is you are not sitting 2 feet to my right while unknown to you, riding on 2 tires balanced with beads while you claim it cant work. You even have the same claim he had, saying the beads "bounce around" in the tire, you cant buy that kind of comedy. I swear, they must be putting degrees in Cracker Jack boxes...
 
(quoted from post at 16:52:40 08/03/15)

I love these threads because the people that scream the loudist that they dont work are the people that have never used them or dont understand how they work. .

Some folks swallow the koolaid, and some dont. I have a bit more than anecdotal evidence used to form my opinion. I started out as a mechanic working on exotic supercars back in 1976, and know many tire shop owners.
This topic comes up fairly often in the shop and on the web.
 
What is the issue you have had with stick on weights.

When I first started using them I had issues mainly because I did not want to acept them. After I had to re-balance a few sets were I tried to get around them I am stuck :lol: on'em now. A good computer balancer can not be fooled...

Beads BTDT I will pass on'em... Are you sure you do not have a bent rim it does not take much and it will ruin a tire... Bent rims are a big issue these days..

BTW what car do you have... A Toyota Camry are any Toyota built on that platform can be a bear to figure out a balance issue... I had one that about whooped me it turned out to be several issues.
1) the center support bearing for the right drive shaft was going out.
2) the left front brake caliper was sticking.
3) The new brake rotors I had just installed while repairing the caliper issue were out of balance... The FIX install the old rotors to prove it and order up another new set of rotors...
4) one bent rim

I lost my arse on that one but lucky for me had a customer that blessed it with his pocket book... What he did not tell me and I should have caught it was it would get to the point it would shake so bad he had to pull over and stop... The sticking brake rotor did not show up on my short test drives :twisted: For quite some time I knew it had a bent rim and tried to work around it I do not work around bent rims any more :!:

One more thang on all those Toyota's I go one size taller and one size narrower on the tires it makes all the difference in the world with tire ware,,, no more wearing the outer edges off like you took a grinder and cut a grove in the sidewall were the tread meets it...

I can not stress a bent rim issue enough you can not work around it it will cost you one way are the other. Either by A tire will ware prematurely if you try and live with it are the shake will drive you crazy...
 
(quoted from post at 23:04:04 08/03/15)
(quoted from post at 16:52:40 08/03/15)

I love these threads because the people that scream the loudist that they dont work are the people that have never used them or dont understand how they work. .

Some folks swallow the koolaid, and some dont. I have a bit more than anecdotal evidence used to form my opinion. I started out as a mechanic working on exotic supercars back in 1976, and know many tire shop owners.
This topic comes up fairly often in the shop and on the web.

Thats exactaly why I tried the beads, too many conflicting reports on them. After I used them and found out for a fact that they worked, then I started looking at the people that posted about them and noticed that people that said they worked had done it. People that said they didnt work either didnt try them or they did it wrong (too few beads, stuff like that) or just made up their mind that they would never work. I swear to god, I could go outside to some of these peoples cars, steal their lead and leave beads and as long as they didnt know, everything is peachy. If they knew... Human Sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria...

Why the naysayers keep insisting the beads dont work is beyond me and why they keep sharing the koolaid rather than just [b:151230e835]trying[/b:151230e835] the beads makes no sense. I really think they wont do it because once it works, they would have to admit they were wrong, and lord knows, they simply [b:151230e835][i:151230e835]cant[/i:151230e835][/b:151230e835] do that. Its a strange world, I just live in it.
 

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