Community Forums

Mark B · 12-31-2012, 09:17 AM

Added 12oz of balance beads to all tires. Wow! What a difference in ride. The coach glides down the road now. Wont go back to spin balance again. Even more quiet inside. Little rattles disappeared.

Mrchips · 12-31-2012, 01:05 PM

Mark, I have never run these in my coach or cars/trucks but I have run them religously in my motorcycles and they absolutley work. I went from averaging 12K miles on motorcycle tires to well over 25k with zero cupping, they simply wore out. Ride is glass smooth. Don't know why I never put them in anything else I owned, but they absolutely do work and make a difference.

Dynabeads is what I use in my bikes.

JohnBoyToo · 12-31-2012, 01:24 PM

glad it worked out for you, but I had a different outcome with mine....

I took them off after about 5k miles...
dunno if them being the centramatic balance rings and
not inside the tires made a difference, but not for me...

rsflight · 12-31-2012, 02:27 PM

I put them in my pickup tires 25000 miles ago. No problems yet, always smooth. When snow, ice or mud get on the wheels it fixes that imbalance too. I liked them so much I added them to the RV tires. It rides like it was on glass. No regrets!

Showkey · 12-31-2012, 04:03 PM

Snake oil and total waste of time and money.............any perceived improvement a placebo effect. Several magazine tests were done on motorcycles and beads conclusion while they do no harm but they also had no change and with auto,and trucks can make things worse.
No tire or vehicle manufacture recommended beads or any other weight inside the tire. I worked in the auto industry for 35 years, worked in field engineering solving vehicle vibrations mostly caused by tire..........beads were not in the list of things that fixed the problems.

Mrchips · 12-31-2012, 07:17 PM

Showkey, I respect your opinion; however, I completely disagree with it. I have more than a few 100K miles on motorcycles using beads and I can assure you that real world is they work to increase both wear time and results in no tire cupping. No need to agree with me, but to call it snake oil is wrong. We will agree to disagree :-) Talk to any motorcycel rides that uses them and I think you'll be hard pressed to find one that will call beads or slime or any other internal product snake oil, at least in the world of motorcycles. I can't vouch for trucks, cars, RV's or any other vehicle type.

CampDaven · 12-31-2012, 08:26 PM

How are the beads added to the tires?

KSCRUDE · 12-31-2012, 08:52 PM

I put the beads in new tires on a GMC pickup a few years ago. The guy driving it didn't make it 50 miles and was complaining about the terrible shake. Took it back to the Goodyear dealer the next day and they removed the beads and spun balanced the tires, and then it rode like new. And to answer CampDaven's question, they come in a thin plastic bag and they throw it in the tire and it breaks out of the bag quickly they say. Used to run them in semi steer tires and couldn't tell one way or the other if they were in there. I just put Centramatics on the MH and on all three axles of a semi truck and the MH is smother then ever. And quite. Although the quite on bumps and extension joints can be more contributed to the koni shocks I put on the MH a month later The sun visors used to shake down within a hundred miles every trip. Now they stay up on a 1000 mile run and never come down even a little. We usually spin balance the steer tires only on the semi trucks. Very few people ever balance the drive tires on a semi. But I put the Centramatics on all three axles just for a test. May do another truck before long. The driver swears by them.

Old Bounder · 12-31-2012, 10:57 PM

I've been running dyna beads in my MH tires for six years and they work great.

Mrchips · 01-01-2013, 06:29 AM

If you don't want to break the tire down simply let the air out, remove the vlave stem get a piece of clear 1/4" tubing, put one end over the valve stem pour a couple inches at a time into the tube, take your air compressor on low air PSI and give a blast into the tubing to push them in the tire, once done re-install the valve stem and air up the tire. Pretty simple operation.

Showkey · 01-01-2013, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrchips

Showkey, I respect your opinion; however, I completely disagree with it. I have more than a few 100K miles on motorcycles using beads and I can assure you that real world is they work to increase both wear time and results in no tire cupping. No need to agree with me,

No problem..........have 8 motorcycles in the garage .......this bead debate on motorcycle forums goes on for ever.........almost like oil threads.

Motorcycle Consumer News a independent no advertising magazine is one of the independent road tests that found no benefit from beads. Wish an engineering firm sponsored by a magazine would do a double blind road test to evaluate beads.
To amplify effect moving weights inside a tire add water..............makes it impossible to balance a tire and it will vibrate like a SOB.

Part of an evaluation, we did add beads to a tire, placed it on a $15,000 high end wheel balance and found it impossible to balance, this go to the argument beads only work on an axle that is supported by a spring, then that goes to the parlor trick of the water bottle spinning on the end of the drill.

This then goes to the fact no tire or vehicle manufactures use beads or any other loose balance system..............conspiracy ?????? With as many problems that are caused by "bad tires or bad vehicles" and the huge money spend to resolve these problems............if beads worked .......we would gladly thrown in beads and went home instead fixing the root cause of the problems............or placed beads in every car and skipped the spin balance step altogether, that does not happen and never will.

Slime in the tires is used to solve other problems ( air leaks) uneven distribution of slime will produce extreme vibrations on all vehicles. I carry slime with a plug kit on all my vehicles ( motorcycles included) to complete on road flat repair. A temporary fix and perfect application for slime, except it it possible to foul the TPMS sensor.

mel s · 01-01-2013, 09:18 AM

I've not used beads because I use Centramatics, (two types of centrifugal balancing don't play well together).
I'm 2,000 miles into my 3rd set of 6 MH tires.
I have always had the tires spin balanced when mounted and I've always used Centramatics.....(the use of both may be "overkill", but it is MY overkill)!
The combination works well for me, (I believe that the Centramatics compensate for tire wear and other future out of balance conditions for the life of the tires).

Some have said beads make the ride "quite".
I don't know about that, but I will say that spin balancing, along with Centramatics, make the ride quite QUIET!
Mel
'96 Safari, (128k miles)

Ed-Sommers · 01-01-2013, 09:23 AM

I never, as a rule, take the word of industry "experts" on anything! Not that they would lie, but their own biases and/or testing practices probably differ than MY true life use come into conflict.

I once was buying some paint pads for a project I had when a guy next to me told me that I was wasting my money. I asked if he was a professional painter, to which he answered that he was a professional. My reply was that he being a "professional" prevented him from understanding the true value of PADS because he neither wanted, not expected proficiency, and easy of job because he was Unionized. He said nothing and walked away.

I had learned the value of Pad's, and even old rags from "Mary Soo", and her girl helpers in Hong Kong, whom could paint an entire Navy ship (for food scraps) in the time Sailors were just starting! And I'm talking about from the tip of the Mast to the water line.

Ed

Mrchips · 01-01-2013, 10:07 AM

Showkey...."Slime in the tires is used to solve other problems ( air leaks) uneven distribution of slime will produce extreme vibrations on all vehicles. I carry slime with a plug kit on all my vehicles ( motorcycles included) to complete on road flat repair. A temporary fix and perfect application for slime, except it it possible to foul the TPMS sensor."

Yes I know what slime is used for, I wasn't refering to it specifically. I was refering to the liquid products that people put in the tires to balance them, to which none I have ever used.

Again, I respect your opinion, but in my real world testing in motorcycle tires I have effectivly gone from a 12K mile average (especially on fronts) with cupping to a 23K mile average with zero cupping. No other wheel weights and zero vibration. I will continue to use them and share my good luck, as such you can share your professional opinion and we will agree to disagree....

the more important part of this equation is that we both apparantly like to RV and ride motorcycles......