Anyone use these http://www.innovativebalancing.com/index.html to balance your tires?

If so, how do you like them. Looks like it would cost ~ $35 to outfit my truck tires (4) with the ceramic beads + applicator + 4 filtered valve cores. LT265/70 R17's on my truck.

Anyone, anyone?

 

Others on this site have used them and posted glowing recommendations for them.

 

I plan to use them if a tire ever requires it.

 

They work great. I can really tell the difference on the highway, always smooth as silk. They are a pain in the rear if you have to patch a tire, but they can be scooped out with a piece of paper pretty easy, and added back in when they are mounting the tire.

This product really made sense to be because I was having to balance the tires every 5-10K miles. A stone, mud, ice, wear, will throw a tire off balance within miles of balancing. These beads compensate for all that everytime you drive.

Well worth the money by saving wear & tear on tires & suspension parts.

 

I'll never have a tire spin balanced with lead weights pounded on again.
It's ancient technology when the beads work so much better. Tires last longer.
Every new tire at home and work gets beads now, semis to compacts. Been doing it for seven years, three with the beads from www.innovativebalancing.com
The Innovative beads are definitely better than the other brands that have been around longer.

 

The only problem that I had was that the tires that I installed them in weren't totally clean inside even though they were new and the beads ended up stuck to the inside of the tire. (No - it wasn't static electricity holding them in place. The inside of the tire was gooey when I had to have one of them patched.) I'll try them again in the future but I'll make sure that the inside of the tires are very clean and dry.

The other thing that I've tried is using RV antifreeze in the tire to centrifical balance. A whole lot less expensive than beads.

 

We use a product called Equal, basically the same stuff, in the bus tires at work, and on emergency vehicles at the local firehouse. Easy stuff, just throw the right size bag in when mounting the tire and off you go, don't have to worry about it again.

 

Thats cool!
I have been religious balencing my tires every 5-8K and this will save a bunch of time.
How do they handle plugs? I didn't see any info about that...
Oilguy

 

Assuming that the beads don't stick to the plug itself due to the adhesive, they should automatically compensate for the change in balance. That's one advantage to the liquid - no worries about sticking.

 

I use the dyna beads also. Little ceramic *****. Never wear out. So far, so good. Never heard of using a liquid... interesting... Wonder if it'll last in the tire...

 

That's pretty cool, Jay!

Could you give us some more anecdotal info?

I'm interested in trying that...

 

Here are a few threads where this was previously discussed:

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...nce+antifreeze

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...nce+antifreeze

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...freeze+balance

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...freeze+balance

I can tell you that I tried it on a front-wheel drive car w/ 205/65R15 tires and didn't get the volume right and had a vibration problem. I didn't have time to mess with it and so just had them drained and balanced. I tried it on the front of my D250 and it worked OK.

It is something that takes some time to mess with. My theory is that it's still a matter of weight so I determine a reasonable amount of weight to balance a particular size tire (about 4oz for a 16" truck tire) and then weight out that much RV antifreeze. I use a 200ml syringe to "inject " the liquid thru the valve stem with the core removed. Reinsert core and reinflate and see if you estimated right.