I installed the Dyna Beads in the tires on my truck yesterday. I put in 4ozs of beads in each tire per Innovative Balancing's tire chart. I also put in the filtered valve cores. Frankly I can't tell whether the wheels are balanced or not. My truck has LT265X75 R16 Michelins mounted on OEM alloy wheels. I've got 30k miles on the truck. On relatively smooth roads at speeds up to 50 mph, there seemed to be very little movement in the steering wheel and I didn't feel much if any vibration in the seat or floor of the truck. On the freeway it was a diiferent story. I felt quite a bit of movement in the steering wheel at speeds between 60 and 70. The freeway that I was on was concrete and fairly rough and , of course, the truck rides rough so I don't know what to think. It's going to be very difficult to find a smooth concrete or black top road around here that I can drive 60-70 mph. Is there another way to tell if the wheels are balanced other than going to a tire shop? The tires are in excellent shape as are the wheels. I normally run 48lbs of air pressure in the tires. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

I had much the same feeling after installing beads in new tires a couple weeks ago. I finally put it off to my own thinking about it too much. When you really start paying attention you'll find most of our roads aren't very smooth. I tend to think that the beads stay in place as long as you are going over 20 mph unless you hit something that most likely damage your suspension, then your tires will only be out of balance momentarily.

As far as I know a spin balance machine won't tell you anything when using beads.

 

Can you describe the vibration? It's important. There's two scenarios here:

1. Steering wheel vibrates up and down.
This is simply balance or an out of round tire, the latter probably doesn't apply here.

2. Steering wheel "shakes", "shimmies", or "wobbles". Assuming everything was ok before when you used weights on these tires, the problem can be one of two things, all amounting to lateral imbalance.

1. Bead lube is inside the tire, and a bunch of beads has stuck to it, throwing things out of balance.
2. The tire has a lateral imbalance (not uncommon) due to inconsistent rubber density or thickness.

If you in the first category, simply adding more beads will fix it. While the chart will accurately guage the amount for 95% of the tires, you still get one once in awhile that is out of balance more than the norm for this size tire. That's why on the Application page, Innovative suggests an extra bag.

If you are in the second category, then it's probably only one tire that's causing the problem, but the key is to locate it. This is done by swapping front to rear, one side frist, then the other. The object is to get the bad tire under the drivers front, where the driver sensitivity is the greatest. Then you'll have to break down (dismount) the tire to see what's going on. Bring a vacuum cleaner with you and a clean bag.
When you take the tire off the vehicle, don't bounce it, treat it gingerly. WQhen you open it up, peek inside to see the beads. They should *all* be laying in the bottom, and none should be stuck to the inside of the tire. If they are, that's your problem.
If they aren't then vacuum out the beads, have the lateral imbalance corrected on a good balancer, and add 2oz of beads to cover any future imbalance as the tire wears normally.

Cheers,
R

 

Thanks Infidel and RKrueger for the replies. The next time that I get a chance to drive the truck, I will jot down what the steering wheel is doing at various speeds and send the info to Inovative Balancing for their analysis. The tires are OEM as I mentioned previously and have never been broken down. The tires were balanced previously with lead weights and steering wheel movement was at a minimum as I recall. No one wheel had an excessive amount of weight. I think 2.75 ozs was the most. With my luck I will probably end up having to take the truck to Discount Tire and have all the tires broken down.