A week ago I installed the Innovative Balance Dyna Beads in the tires on my truck. It turned out not to be a very good experience in my case. Robert @ Innovative Balancing helped me to identify the problem. It seems that a couple of tires and wheels on my truck suffered from a lateral imbalance problem. This was corrected Saturday at a tire shop by removing the beads and going back to lead weights. So now the truck has beads in two tires and weights on two tires. As far as I'm concerned, the experience has been a waste of time, money and some back breaking work since I did the job myself originally. Robert was very helpful through the whole process and I definitely have learned a few things. In retrospect I would have throughly examined my tires & wheels prior to ordering the beads. Reason, I had one wheel that had 3.5ozs of weight on the inside of the wheel and only 1.25ozs on the outside. One other wheel had a large disparity between weights on the inside and the outside. According to Robert (Innovative Balancing), both sides of the wheel should have approximately the same amount of weight for the beads to be effective. Otherwise, and this was my trucks problem, you end up with wobbling ( pronounced side to side motion ) in the steering wheel.

Robert suggested that I put 2 ozs of beads in the tires that were re-balanced with lead weights for future problems. I will consider that. I will also consider replacing the beads in the other two wheels with the lead weights even though they seem to be balanced ( both are on the rear). In theory I think the beads are great but, I did not have one tire/wheel that had the same amount of weight on both sides of the wheel. Two were reasonably close and two were not. My tires were 10 Ply LT265x75 R16 on factory alloy wheels. On this type of tire and wheel combo I would be surprised if all 4 tires/wheels ended up with the same amount of weight on any vehicle.

 

The beads are great but can't compensate for a defective tire.
I've been using beads for quite some time and have never ran into a problem, hope I never do.

 

Did you try to rotate the tire on the wheel? Most of the time when I have a large difference between the amount of weights on the inside vs. the outside when I balance a tire, rotating the tire on the wheel works. Also did you check your wheel runout (bent wheel) or is it all tire?

 

Tires and wheels that are true don't need much weight at all, and exact same weight inside and out almost never happens. All the tires I've ever seen that had a vibration that would not go away with balancing were not true or had a wheel that was not true. Balance it all you want and put NASA space goo in it, it will still cause a vibration if the tire/wheel is lumpy. Hopefully you didn't spend too much on this problem

 

I'm presently fighting a vibration apparently coming from two tires of a fairly new Michelin tire set that appear now to be out of round.
Discount Tire rebalanced and rotated my tires a week ago and my 70mph vibration got worse.
Took it back Saturday and they RE-rebalanced them (tech said they were out of balance! )
They appear to have just put the worst 2 tires on the rears so I wouldn't feel the vibes so bad. Now they are back in the exact same position before I had them rotated to begin with!
Frustrated, I took my toy home and jacked it up off all fours and put it in drive... Wob,wob,wobble... I wished I had a roller attached to a scale to accurately measure the runout. Worst one looks to be abt 1/4" runout... I can't tell if it is tires, rims or both.
I'm going back this week to repeat my little wobble demo.

While I was there at D-T, I inquired if they ever used or dealt with balancing beads... "Nope! Just a fad..." said the store mgr.
I can see where the beads might work in some applications. But for my lopsided tires, I won't attempt it.

K.

 

That has been going on in most OTR trucks for for close to 20 years.

 

As I said previously, beads won't be effective if your truck has a defective tire and/or wheel. Question is, what determines if a tire or wheel is defective. Despite their best efforts, the maufacturing processes can and do end up with tires/wheels that are not perfectly matched for balancing purposes. They may end up being within the manufacturers/DOT tolerances, but that could cause problems that beads can't resolve. Case in point, a friend of mine purchased 4 Michelin E rated LT265X75 R16 M&S tires three weeks ago. These tires sell for $166 each at Discount Tire. The tires were balanced using the top of the line Road Force balancer at Discount. My friends truck is very similar to mine and the tires were mounted on OEM factory alloys which were in great shape.

After my tire/ wheel problems, which I mentioned previously in this thread, he and I decided to check the tires on his truck to see how much lead weight was on each tire. The results are as follows:

Drivers front: Outside of wheel 2.00 ozs. - Inside of wheel 0.75 ozs.
Drivers rear: Outside of wheel 1.00 ozs. - Inside of wheel 1.00 ozs.
Passenger front: Outside of wheel 1.00 ozs. - Inside of wheel 1.75 ozs.
Passenger rear: Outside of wheel 0.75 ozs. - Inside of wheel 0.00 ozs.

I then drove his truck which checked out great as far as steering wheel movement.

Based on what Robert @ Innovative Balancing told me, I would say that the driver's rear; the passengers front & rear are candidates for a Dyna bead implant and lead weight removal. The drivers front has a problem; but, is it a defective tire or wheel? Anyone care to speculate. Maybe Robert will give his expert opinion.

I am really disappointed the beads only worked on two of my tires and wheels. Personally I think it's the way to go otherwise over time & mileage, as each tire wears , the tires and wheels will have to re-balanced. Then you run the risk getting a wheel messed up or something else or maybe getting a balance machine that hasn't been re-calibrated recently and you have to do it all over again. Personally I don't like taking my truck to Discount Tire, the dealer or anyone else to be worked on. I do know one thing however, I can't do the bead routine on either front tire/wheel even if I buy new tires until I determine if the wheel is the culprit in my problems.

 

I'll find out this afternoon after I have my 3rd pow-wow with D-T .
I'm hoping its just two bad tires and not two bent rims.