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Balance Beads


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I put beads in the BMW rear wheels mainly because I don't have the adapter and they seem to work well.

When I weight balance I rotate the heavy spot to the top, move it both directions till it starts to move on its own then start placing two weights spread on the opposite till it balances.

But back to beads.

I think I understand how they balance in a vertical plane but how do they balance laterally, assuming they do?

How well do they work in a big tire where lateral balance is important ?

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There isn't a lateral balance, AFAIK.  It's a vertical balance on the inboard and the outboard ends of the tire and it's called dual plane or dynamic balancing.  I don't know if beads can do dual plane balancing like weights can, but most people who use them love them.  And when you do it your way with weights you're not doing a dual plane balance so if that satisfies you the beads should also.

 

When I do the DIY balancing I let the heavy end fall to the bottom, then do the back & forth thing to try to get rid of a false position due to friction/stiction.  I think it would work better, or at least faster.  On one car I used the idling engine to break the stiction, it seemed to work really well.  Repeated spins of the tire had it settle in the same place every time, within an inch or two, which is as good as it gets unless it's hugely out of balance.

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I did the heavy end to the bottom way for years, I find if I put the heavy to the top I can do it faster and more accurately .

I see what you mean, dynamic balancing, that's what I meant by lateral - one side of a tire heavier.

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It's not about one side of the tire being heavier, the wheel/tire combination will almost always be heavier on one side and that doesn't matter.

 

The light spots will generally be in two different places between the two sides.  When you static balance, whether done by one of the DIY methods or a machine, you find the light spot for the whole thing (combination of inboard & outboard light spots 'averaged' out to one spot) and counter that with weights.  Dynamic balancing will show the light spot inboard and the light spot outboard and let you counter both of them independently to get a better balance.  The wider the tire/wheel is the more important it can be to go dynamic.  Above that would be 'road force' balancing.  A roller puts load on the tread while the machine spins it and they can balance out imperfections even better.

 

This might have been what you meant by 'one side being heavier' and already understand it all, but I spelled it out just in case and for the next guy who's curious.

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6 hours ago, superhawk996 said:

Above that would be 'road force' balancing

There was one of those on the local craigslist a couple months ago, an antique. I remember shops using them in the 50's.

Excellent explanation.

2 hours ago, DBLXX said:

My Goldwing tires lasted X2 as long when I used the beads back in the day. 

My question is - how - or perhaps why?

Would they do the same for auto and truck tires?

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1 hour ago, OMG said:

 

My question is - how - or perhaps why?

Would they do the same for auto and truck tires?

IIRC Dave run car tire on his GW. However I find it hard to believe that he owned any motorcycle long enough to go through two sets of tires.😁

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11 hours ago, superhawk996 said:

What I always wonder is why they say that you must remove the weights to use beads, makes no damn sense.

 

A thousand rolling beads would add a huge amount of friction, or perceived "stiction" and would stop the tire rolling before the heavy part reaches the bottom.  Think of it like adding sand to something, it will try to clump. 

 

Beads have been proven to save long-haul and medium trucks fuel and tire wear in SAE tests.  So they clearly work in "big" tires.  Those aren't wide however.

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15 minutes ago, SwampNut said:

A thousand rolling beads would add a huge amount of friction, or perceived "stiction" and would stop the tire rolling before the heavy part reaches the bottom.  Think of it like adding sand to something, it will try to clump. 

That would explain why you can't manually balance with beads in the tire, but I'm talking about adding beads with weights already on it and the recommendation to remove weights when adding beads.  I repeatedly see people on forums saying that the weights will fight the beads, makes no damn sense unless the wheel was improperly balanced so far off that the beads can't counter it.

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I have noticed that as tires wear that they can go out of balance and that doesn't make much sense either. Unless it's weights coming off.

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I don't really know why it happens, but it does.  Uneven wear is the only rational guess.  Running big off-road tires on 15" wheels, I get LOTS of weights, and every rebalance finds something wrong. 

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8 hours ago, ptxyz said:

 i later found out there's a little filter to keep 'em outta there

A requisite from what I've read.

The concept that they will keep balancing a tire for it's life is appealing.

I still would like to understand the physics involved.

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19 hours ago, OMG said:

I have noticed that as tires wear that they can go out of balance and that doesn't make much sense either. Unless it's weights coming off.

As a tire wears there are slight changes that occur in the structure of the tire and that could change the balance.  The tires can rotate on the wheel.  I don't know if all tires do this, but I experienced it with one of my Mustangs.  I did a lot of drag racing and that may have caused or accelerated the process.  I was only checking the rears and only because I knew I was stressing them more than 'normal'.  Uneven tread wear and tread damage will obviously do it.  Hard off-roading causes tread damage, but I've seen street tires with chunked bits of tread, possibly from going over curbs or just hitting shit on the road.  I had some shitty tires on my Explorer that would repeatedly go out of balance quickly, but they had obvious amounts of runout.

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20 hours ago, SwampNut said:

Oh, yeah, that wrong I read.  I have a half-baked guess with the weights not being EXACTLY where the imbalance lies, and the beads trying to be precise down to microns.

 

Possibly, tho I would think the same would happen when a tire is close enough to need no weights.  I've had a few that needed none or just one weight.  Have you ever noticed a new car with what looks like just the steel clip part of a weight and no weight?  I was told they do that at the factory as a visual inspection thing to show that it was checked and didn't need a weight.  Seems kinda silly, but I can't think of any other reason they'd do it.

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Actually that makes absolutely perfect sense.  Lots of environments require a positive action like that rather than "it didn't need it so we didn't do it."  In some secure environments we were required to put unconnected network plugs into open jacks to show we'd programmed all of them securely, not just ignored them.

 

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