Dyna Beads

[james t]

Nope, regular valve stem with core.

 

[Creager]

did you actually try golf balls? hahaha, you are my idol

 

[MountaineerGreen]

Ok, I have read over this thread twice now, and Im about to do it. I bought some Daisy BB's at wally world. I measured out 5 oz. of BBs for each tire and am going to put them in tomrrow. They wont fit through the valve stem, so I have to break the bead. I have stock size and design tires that need to be re balanced. I have lifetime balance at wally world, but do not want to wait four hours for them to do a 15 min job. Does anybody have any comments / suggestions before I start? Thanks in advance....

 

[MountaineerGreen]

Bumpin..... I need some insight / info before tomrrow!

 

['97 V8]

try it. when i had the stock rims with 33's i was fine except for a vibration i got. But as i said with the 15x10 it was hell. But your stock so i guess you'll be fine. do it.

 

[MountaineerGreen]

No more wheel weights!

I did it. I removed each wheel, broke the bead, and put in approx 5oz of BB's in each tire. 5oz is prob overkill, but id rather have too much than to little. Works great- no vibration at any speed. Noise is barely noticeable with the windows up, but can be heard when I stop with the windows down. What I hear is the BB's falling on the wheel. I am well pleased. $5 in BB's will do two trucks.

 

[adarkang]

Does anybody have any updated comments on "equal" or "dynabeads"??? Are they still working well for everyone?

 

[Turdle]

I figured I would give some air soft pellets a whirl.

 

[Maniak]

I guess I'll give an update.. We are still running airsoft pellets and haven't balanced 33" tires in years. The Trxus Mt's which are notorious for being unbalanced seem to be very smooth with 8 ounces of pellets in each tire. Its keeping them balanced even with chunks of lugs taken out.

edit: we are currently running 33x12.50 Trxus Mt's on 15x8 rims which are slightly bent. We have 8 ounces in each tire. When we had the BFG tires on the same rims we were running 4 ounces.

~Mark

 

[CDW6212R]

I like the idea of BB's in there, the noise would be wild to start with. I'd like to see the looks of pedestrians at stops for a while.

 

[MountaineerGreen]

The noise at low speeds is minimal, after about 15 mph, the noise stops all together. The real sound is when you stop, about a second after, your wheel is showered with lots of BB's making an interesting sound. That is when you get looks in traffic.

I drove with the BB's for quite a while, worked really well, when I changed tires, I didn't plan ahead and have the bb's ready for the tire shop, so I had them balance them the traditional way. That was when I was running my wal-mart goodyears and switched to the BFG's. I always intended to balance the STT's that way, just never got around to it.

 

[Turdle]

I figured I would give some air soft pellets a whirl.

Since I have 33" tires, I had the tire shop install, a little over 8 oz ( 250 grams) of .020 gram white air soft pellets per tire a few days ago, and also the 5th shock.

Smooth as glass!! Oh man, I cannot believe the ride now!

Also, the pellets make minimal noise,only when coming to a complete stop. At worst it sounds like a truck behind you with air brakes stopping. The slight noise is without a doubt a minor trade off considering the ride improvement.
Highly recommended!!!!

 

[Willard]

I'm gonna have to give this a shot. My tires are not balanced well anymore, the balance hasn't held well. This should ensure no matter how crappy they wear that they will stay balanced.

And air soft pellets are cheap I could do lots of tires with a container of those.

 

[Maniak]

I figure I'd give a report on the latest set of tires to get airsoft pellets.


We picked up a set of 265x75r16 hercules all-trac (load range E) to put on the van. They were replacing a set of old buckshot mudders (yuck)..

To cut down on the # of pellets we had to use, I stopped at the local airsoft/paintball place and got a bag of .25 gram pellets.

I used my pocket scale (from harbor freight tools) and one of the measuring cups from the kitchen. I put about 8 ounces in each baggie. The pellets I already had were much lighter (orange ones) and took almost twice as many to get the same weight.

I took them over to my neighbors house (he has a tire machine) and put the new tires on the rims and dumped the pellets in the tires as we mounted them.

I drove it a few hundred miles and they are ice smooth.

I then drove the van about 800 miles, pulling the explorer on the trailer and it still drove nice and smooth (tire wise). I can tell they are load range E tires when I got into Ca as interstate 8 in Ca is really rough (very bumpy).

Here is the pile of pellets/gear I had when I finished weighing out the bags. The dark gray ones are the ones that have run about 50k miles in a set of 33" tires.

I have helped install the pellets on a few other vehicles, and found if the rims are bent, they won't work well. I found that listed on dynabeads own site too. Bent rims and dynamic balancing beads just don't work.

~Mark

 

[gmanpaint]

Glad this thread was bumped!

Will a big tire store chain agree to using the beads instead of traditional weights?

Has anyone tried to do that?

I was just wondering if I took mine in and told them that I don't think the balance they gave me was any good,(cause it's not) and I would want them to use the pellets instead.

 

[Maniak]

I know of at least one discount tire and one Jack Furrier Tire center that will put in the beads.

both were intrigued with it. My neighbor had at least heard of semi's running with balancing beads.

~Mark

 

[MountaineerGreen]

Many semi drivers used to use golf balls in the steering tires.

May people don't understand how they work and scoff at the idea, but they do work very well. It's just the noise of the pellets hitting the wheel after stopping I don't like. Cruising with the windows down, it makes people look.

 

[CDW6212R]

My mail truck just got new tires, and they needed a bunch of weight. I'd try the beads if I could do it over. What's another odd noise?

 

[97sprt4x4]

this is similar to big rigs using a liquid. It's not water, it's a little heavier. but we had some come in to our shop as a demo, but as we do not use service big rigs we had no use in using it. I'm planning on doing this when i bump up to my 285s and hopefully will save me a lot of time getting my tires rebalanced.

 

[Fusion213]

I put the dynabeads in my 39.5 bias iroks in march of this year because i received a bad vibe from the drop in bag of sand like media very similar to equal. I found out when I pulled the rims apart that a lot of the balancing media had stayed in the bag, probably a problem. With the dynabeads it runs smooth all the way up to 90mph(the fastest i've gone). Probably next time i'm going to run airsoft pellets. Those dynabeads are too expensive.