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It's time to replace my Michelins and was wondering if anyone had experience with ceramic balancing beads that go inside the tire.

Has anyone tried them and are they safe to use?

55

!! Never heard of these before

i did a bit of surfing and they seem quite prolific... reading through some forums, the 4x4 guys are using them to great effect in those big tyres which change all attempts at balancing when the tyre is full of mud after playing..
Seems as though the FZ6 riders in the UK have it covered as well...... they use BB airsoft ammo

Can anyone explain the physical principal behind these? How does a bunch of small balls, rolling around in your wheel, balance it? Are they going to stay at the bottom of your tire? Probably up to some speed... then centrifugal forces take over and they stay on the wall, or do they always stay at the bottom of your tire? If your tire is out of round the beads will find the furthest point/s from the axis of rotation and group there? Still don't see how that would balance your tire. Are the light spots on the tire always thin areas furthest away from the axis of rotation? What if the thin area is close to the axis of rotation... the beads will never group there and then they throw your wheel more out of balance. Maybe they absorb vibration... sort of like a beanbag... doesn't bounce...? How many beads should you put in? If you put in too many will that not cause an out of balance situation? Balancing a tire has two factors... the amount of weight and it's placement... if you can't control either one, how is that going to help?

Ves wrote: Can anyone explain the physical principal behind these? How does a bunch of small balls, rolling around in your wheel, balance it? Are they going to stay at the bottom of your tire? Probably up to some speed... then centrifugal forces take over and they stay on the wall, or do they always stay at the bottom of your tire? If your tire is out of round the beads will find the furthest point/s from the axis of rotation and group there? Still don't see how that would balance your tire. Are the light spots on the tire always thin areas furthest away from the axis of rotation? What if the thin area is close to the axis of rotation... the beads will never group there and then they throw your wheel more out of balance. Maybe they absorb vibration... sort of like a beanbag... doesn't bounce...? How many beads should you put in? If you put in too many will that not cause an out of balance situation? Balancing a tire has two factors... the amount of weight and it's placement... if you can't control either one, how is that going to help?

Agreed! I don't understand how they work and I've asked on lots of other forums before, if anyone has first hand experience with them. So far I haven't found anyone that has. I'll stick with my balancing technique. Afterall, it doesn't take too long (just enough time for a beer) and I already own the balancer and weights. Call me old fashioned, but I'll stick with the "tried and true".

I was intriqued by this thread and as such did a little 'surfing'.

Seems widely used by the commercial truck operators.
One motorcycle forum in the Uk advocates the use of BB airsoft shells!!

Anyway i digress -- how does it work?

http://www.scorpionracing.co.uk/ and follow the dynabead link, scroll down and they have a pictorial explanation..

HTH
Digga

Here's a good Video demo of the same type of balancer, except for trucks. A good friend of mine just put these on his truck and it certainly worked as expected. They're not much good below 30 mph, but at that speed the lack of balance is not noticeable. I'm not sure that I'd put them in my tires, as I've heard some of the guys at a local shop say that it makes a terrible mess when you have to change tires. They do work as advertised and I do like the idea of no weights taped to the wheel though....

Just put some in my new tires last month, but thus far have not managed to get out of the city. Have not noticed anything unusual with daily commuting around town, and it looks like it may be 2-4 weeks before I really get an opportunity to test them. I'll post again once I've had that opportunity. BTW- I ordered from http://www.bestrestproducts.com/ which provided quick customer service.

It does look interesting and I would think that it would work fine. I really like the devices that are external to the truck tires which were shown in the videos. I believe that's a much more useful application than motorcycle tires. The crap I put in my rear tire a while back to stop the slow leak also claimed it would dynamically balance the tire. Maybe so. I didn't notice any difference. I looked at DynaBeads' web site. They kind of lost my respect when I saw them pushing the idea of filling tires with nitrogen.

As far as motorcycle tires go, I don't have a problem with the rim weight method. Except when the local dealer installed my rear tire a while back with 9 weights at 3 different locations. That's the last time they'll touch my bike.

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touchton wrote:Except when the local dealer installed my rear tire a while back with 9 weights at 3 different locations. That's the last time they'll touch my bike.
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A properly balanced wheel should only have weights in ONE location!

touchton wrote: They kind of lost my respect when I saw them pushing the idea of filling tires with nitrogen.

Why??
I am under the impression that this is what the racers use because it runs cooler than Oxygen, and seeing as rubber is pervious, and Nitrogen is 'thicker' than Oxy, that it doesn't escape as easily as Oxy does.... or is the guy from Pirelli feeding me Bullsh*t??

Wow... If I hadn't of seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it.... I can see a college level Physics course where the teacher says, "It's left to the student to prove that these stupid little balls will arrange them selves intelligently around this tire to achieve perfect dynamic balance."... And all the student give him this blank stare....

digga wrote:

touchton wrote: They kind of lost my respect when I saw them pushing the idea of filling tires with nitrogen.

Why??
I am under the impression that this is what the racers use because it runs cooler than Oxygen, and seeing as rubber is pervious, and Nitrogen is 'thicker' than Oxy, that it doesn't escape as easily as Oxy does.... or is the guy from Pirelli feeding me Bullsh*t??

The people pushing nitrogen claim it's more stable, it reduces wheel and tire deterioration due to oxidation, increases tread life, increases gas mileage, and prevents uneven wear. While I agree it's more stable, I don't have problems with wheel and tire deterioration. In all cases where I've worn out a tire, I've worn out the outside of the tire long before the inside deteriorated. I don't see where wheel corroding is an issue either. The last three selling points are tied to proper inflation. As long as you keep your tires properly inflated, nitrogen is no better than air.

Personally, I run a blend of gases in my tires; approximately 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% argon. It's mostly nitrogen. It's stable, plentiful, and real cheap. It's 'air' and I've got a garage full of it. Actually have a whole bunch of it compressed in the corner.

For racing, it's worth the expense. That's an appropriate use case for filling tires with nitrogen. Anything that can save a few hundred milliseconds around the track or add a few laps to a set of tires is worth doing. But, for street riding, I think 'air' is just fine. Anyone trying to sell you anything else is just trying to separate you from your money.

How much is it to fill a tire with nitrogen anyway? And, would you know if was really 'pure' nitrogen? Maybe it's only 78%!

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touchton wrote:

digga wrote:

touchton wrote: They kind of lost my respect when I saw them pushing the idea of filling tires with nitrogen.

How much is it to fill a tire with nitrogen anyway? And, would you know if was really 'pure' nitrogen? Maybe it's only 78%!

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I don't know what they charge.. i work at aTool Hire yard that are agents for 'Air Products', one of the race guys came into collect some Nitrogen, and i asked why they used it..
i would think that in this case it was 100% Nitrogen
That 78% variety will do me fine as well the human race seems to be OK on it

p.s I'am not aware of any motorcycle shops/ tyre outlets that sell the Nitrogen service..

I'm not sure of any shops that tout nitrogen services, but i've got a friend who works as Costco in the automotive department and he says that they regularly use 100% nitrogen in the tires. Have the machine/compressor on site to fill tires. He fills the tires in his Buell with it can claimed that it's 'less resistant to pressure increase/decrease with temperature" I'm not sure the validity of that claim, but if you want nitrogen, I'm sure you could visit a place like that and get 2 tires filled pretty cheap... but you'd still have some good ol' 'AIR' in there unless they draw a vacuum and then fill... Overall the compressor in my garage is much more convenient than riding to a shop somewhere.

Lobo1625 wrote:I'm not sure of any shops that tout nitrogen services, but i've got a friend who works as Costco in the automotive department and he says that they regularly use 100% nitrogen in the tires.

I'm a big fan of Costco for many of their business practices; reasonable executive compensation, commitment to paying employees a living wage, etc. I've seen where they will fill tires they sell with nitrogen free. I do agree there are benefits to using pure nitrogen and if someone is getting their tires filled with nitrogen free, it's definitely worth every penny. For people that don't monitor their tire pressure on a regular basis, nitrogen does provide a benefit.

I don't have any issues with nitrogen itself. Like I've said, 78% of what's in my tires is nitrogen. I don't like the way some folks are marketing it. Filling tires with nitrogen does not improve gas mileage. It does not increase tread life or reduce uneven tire wear. Maintaining proper tire pressure does all these things. I've read where some places will fill your tires with nitrogen for $10 per tire. I just don't have respect for someone selling a product based on the idiom 'a fool and his money are soon parted'.

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OK, back to the ceramic bead thing. I saw some tire cords, revealed on my Conti Road Attack rear tire. Now comes the internal debate - have the cycle shop do the tire change, or do it myself. I changed cycle tires once on a dual sport - that was a real pain in the a** - but my tools were not right for the job. When I saw the difference in price for the tire on the internet versus the store's, I decided to do it myself. I will be buying a tire change kit I saw at a local cycle store. But for the balancing, after reading the posts here and researching the web sites, I also decided to try the ceramic beads. If this all comes off OK, I'm good for tire changing from now onward. I ordered the tire, the bead kit, and some new read brake pads (might as well, while the caliper is off). Since I use the "R" for commuting as well as touring, I will be changing tires at about ten month intervals (~10k miles on the rear tire, 20k on the front). I'll report back on the tire change and the bead effectiveness.

Also, the nitrogen thing, it has some merit, but will likely go un-noticed for the average rider/driver. After all, as one post above notes, you really can't get all the air out prior to injecting nitrogen, without some special method to hold the tire beads on if you pull a vacuum. So you would probably increase the nitrogen percentage from 78% to about 92%. This seems to be in the category of "fine tuning", and likely have little effect.

I have used them and they work as they are supposed to! Go to http://www.innovativebalancing.com for more info. You can call them for further info. I posted somewhere, maybe here acouple of years ago before I bought them and you would have thought it was an oil thread, as many swore that it was not the thing to do. You can reuse them too. The side issue of lead in the environment has an interesting aspect as well-just google for more info and you will see that the fact that lead weights falling off is a big one and has resulted in various companies getting away from typical balance weights and some states have laws governing the use of lead weights. It is a money saver and results in perfect balance all the time, even as the tire wears. Whitehorse press also sells them, but I bought mine directly.

The balancing bead concept seems pretty sketchy to me, sort of like ethanol.
I didn't see anything on innovativebalancing.com specifically regarding theory of operation.
Without some engineering background or data it's hard for me to see much more than a fad.
I am from a family of truckers and am very familiar with how much more credence some folks give to word-of-mouth than science or engineering.
Ethanol is a similar kind of thing; but there is no net gain in energy, just some repackaging; and it makes food more expensive.

All of that being said, however, the lack of scientific / engineering data does not mean that the bead balancing doesn't work.
Pyramids, Rome, Greece etc. were built long before there was a complete understanding of physics.
Steam power was used for decades before the science of thermodynamics was understood.
Tire technology development relies as much on road testing as any engineering / science.
The more I learn, the more I realize how much more there is to learn, just because something cannot be explained doesn't mean it won't work.


For my $, however, I want to see some of that scientific / engineering data.

DLS

If you check around you will see that they are used by over the road trucks. Building pyramids? I thought we were talking about centrifugal force and gyroscopic principles. I never got over 100 mph with them and only for a grief time at that speed but have had them for a good while and they work. When I worked in Goodyears' Topeka plant , I remember them using tire repair patches/boots to balance some tires and a grinding machine to balance other OEM tires. Some of you guys sure do like stick-on weights?