Wheel/Tire balancing???

Has anyone ever heard of or has used a product called Dyna Beads?

From what I read, they are added to your wheel/tire (read as installed inside your tire/tube), and they dynamically balance your tires as you drive. They consist of a set of ceramic pellets/beads that are free to go anywhere inside your tire/wheel/tubes. They some how effectively balance your wheel by distributing themselves in the light areas of the tire.

Now, I'm a complete DIY'er, and love the idea of the possibility of not needing to buy over $200 worth of balancing tools and equipment for my bike. And at $11+shipping, I'm having a hard time not just going out and blindly using them. I just wanted to see what other people thought.

Here is their link,

http://www.innovativebalancing.com/index.html



Let me know what you all think.

 

I remember my step dad telling me that he put three golf balls in his truck's tires. He never had to balance his tires, which was quite a convenience when consider how hard it must be to balance a 36 inch tall tire.

 

There aren't any tire balancing beads that are going to magically balance your tires without doing anything. That's a stupid idea since you don't need any special equipment to balance tires anyway but if you fall for it I have some desert land you might want to buy.

 

Forget the beads. And you also don't need $200 worth of equipment.

All you need is your wheel/tire, the axles and something to support both sides of the axle so the tire doesn't hit the ground. I used sawhorses:


The heavy spot on the wheel will settle to the bottom. You can make sure that the friction of the bearing/seal doesn't hang it up by rotating the axle back and forth a bit (1/8 turn) fairly rapidly.

 

Confusing the issue a bit is the fact there are two products on the market right now calling themselves "Dyna Beads". I'm researching the differences right now and will get back to everyone.

I'm planning on using them, just haven't yet. I've talked to a few long-distance riders I know and respect that do use them, and they freakin love the things. No more wheel wieghts, no more re-balancing, and no more vibration. They swear by them now.

Reasonably cheap, easy to install, and never have to worry about a wheel wieght coming off, or the wheel being slightly out of balance again.

 

remember the valve is rarely the heavy spot of the rim, find it yourself

 

Altus, the guys you've been talking to are idiots. You will be one too if you fall for a worthless gimmick like that. Think about it, there's no way for the tire to figure out where it's unbalanced at and relay the information to the beads so they can magically move to the correct location to balance the tire. The tire would need to have a lot of sensors and circuitry to detect the unbalance then some way to communicate to the beads (wi-fi maybe?) then the beads would need to have a motorized system to move them to the correct location and hold there and that would require a lot of power with a pretty good size motor on each one and a lot of battery power to operate them. After all the equipment is installed in the tire to make the system work the tires would be bigger than the bike!
You'll not only be wasting your money but it could be dangerous. I wouldn't want to be cruising along at 80 and have my tires become unbalanced because the beads shifted but it might be a way for you to get a Darwin Award.

 

Vibrations from an imbalance cause a disturbance in the centripetal forces within the wheel. Think about those "clapper" toys with the two balls that slam together. By swiing the stick around you cause the balls to follow your movement, but it you suddenly jerk your hand, the balls will suddenly switch directions. Do it at just the right time and the balls will separate and swing opposite directions until the reach each other on the other side and "clap". Ther motion of an imbalanced wheel would do the same thing to the "beads" until the reach the sweet spot where the beads' weight will be distributed just right to counteract the imbalance and centripetel forces will keep the beads where they need to be.

 

i remember when they said stuff like that about pc's, the internet, 4 cylinder cars, cell phones and bikes from japan

 

Well - I suppose the proof is in what works.
The guys I talk to - they're using them. No wieghts - just the beads. No vibration (slow or fast), no noticeable noise or other effect, no problems in thousands of kilometres.
An example a local rider gave me -- he couldn't get the front wheel on his '95 Honda ST 1100 to stay in balance - it was a new, from-the-shop traditionally balanced Metzeler Lasertec. He'd ride it for a week, then start getting vibration in the handlebars. Take it back - bearings good, everything seems ok, oh look - out of balance. They'd do it again - he'd get a week, same problem returns. Did that 3 times, then went to the Dyna Beads and took off the wheel wieghts entirely. Lo and behold - all the vibration went away and never came back. He still has that tire on (has about 15,000 km on it) and still hasn't had a problem.

 

I just remembered something about this. High speed CD drives (32x and up) use this same techinque to smooth out vibrations to keep discs from shattering and allow the laser to accurately follow the microscopic track on the disc.

If you listen to a CD drive spin the disc down before it ejects you'll hear a slight metallic whirring sound after the disc stops. That would be the small beads inside the spindle hub spinning around inside from inertia after the hub has stopped.

 

I think maybe you are being a bit hard on the guys using them.

I can't see the beads shifting when under the very large centrifugal force on them at 80mph.

IMO, you have to try it & see how you think it works. It is not expensive. I would try it but I have 'slime' in my tires & the beads would not be free to move around.

I balance my own m/c tires with 2 axle stands as in the pic using the sawhorses.

 

I just had a rear tire changed on my 86 gsxr and the old tire had some sort of bb size beads in it.i asked the mech and he said they put them in tires sometimes.

 

I just received my Dyna Beads today. They look just as I anticipated. Now I just need to do is purchase the tires.

 

I just saw some adhesive tire weights on the jcwhitney site.$29 seems like a better idea.Jsut need to place eem so they dont hit brake calipers.

 

Well, today I had a few moments to attempt to mount one of my new tires. Let's just say that it turned into a complete fiasco. I attempted to replace the rear tire. First thing's first. I removed all the support equipment with minimal issues. The shocks were the most annoying part of this step. Next, I was to remove the old tire. HOLY HECK!!!! The old tire was sooooo dry rotted, that there was absolutely no flex to it at all. I wish I had a cam corder. I must have been a sight seeing a grown man laying on three tire levers, while trying to pry yet another between the tire and wheel, while trying not to flip my wheel station (old truck wheel and hardware). As that struggle was complete, installation of the new wheel was nothing in comparison. Finally, it's time to seat the bead. However, those dyna-Beads needed to go in first. That darned straight tire valve stem in the rear (no I didn't have a 90* replacement this time). The freaking beads went all over the place. And I didn't even know it until after I had set the beads of the tire. AAAARRRRRRGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, the installation of the tire went about as smooth as a chain saw's teeth. I had issues trying to get the rear shocks installed without removing the exhaust. Oh yea, that was fun.

Anyway, the complete (1 tire) task wasted about 3 hours of my life this afternoon. And now I can't ride it this weekend. All because I dumped those beads everywhere, and didn't know it until too late.


I'll post more as I get the work completed.

 

Hey guys, I've been following this issue since it came out, and I'm interested to see if these beads actually work as they say they do. But as I continue working on my bike, I keep coming up with new questions. This is going to sound stupid, but do I have to ballance my back tire, if I just take it off and put it back on again?
Mac :?

 

If you take the tire off the rim you must put it back in exactly the same position on the rim to avoid having to rebalance it.

If you are just removing the rear wheel (with tire remaining on it) & then replacing the rear wheel, no rebalancing is needed.

 

As oldgoat said,

If, however, you're removing the tire from the rim, then you'll want to use a piece of chalk, a tire crayon, or something else to put a witness mark on the tire at the valve stem. When you remount it, just realign your mark with the valve stem and the wheel should retain its balance.

 

Just checking - you had the tire off, and waiting until you put it back ON before putting the beads in through the valve stem??

I think the preferred method is what shops do - after the first bead is on you dump the beads into the tire, then put the second bead on the rim and inflate.

 

Well, it's all completed now. I'm taking a quick lunch break first. Then I'm going to take her for a quick ride. I'll let everyone know my first impressions on the beads.

 

I can honestly say, "I'm impressed."

I am guessing the beads are balancing my tires/wheels. I only say this because I took no precaution on how I installed the tires onto the wheels. Did not statically balance the wheel to align the mark of the tire. I just set the beads of the tires and poured in the Dyna-Beads through the valve stems.

After my 15-20 minute ride, I can honestly say it rode very smooth. I will definately be getting more in the future (for the rest of my vehicles).