I am thinking of going to beadlocks and was thinking that if I went with balancing beads that I could avoid going to the tire shop all together, they suck a balancing big mud tires anyways!

Is anyone using balancing beads in their tires? If so, I am looking for feedback, pros, cons, and brand opinions. Also do any of the national chains sell them?

 

i don't know, in spite of all the hype, i have never seen them to work.

 

Have you found examples of them not being effective or is this just the result of no experience with them?

I used to work for a diesel engine mfg and I know that was what we used in our test trucks, but I am not sure if the added dynamics of large lugs changes the effectivness.

 

running dynabeads on a stock rim with Hankook 315/70/17 MTs.
these particular tires are not well balanced and took a lot of weight to balance tradionally and I'm currently at 12oz. of beads and it needs more. my recommendation, research a tire that requires little or no balancing if you want to run beads

 

I tried them on my 37" GY MT/R's... went back tot he tire shop twice and they could not get them dialed in. Even more frustrating was that they seemed to randomly go in and out of slight balance making it very hard to figure out. ended up switching to the AEV wheels and weights (still needed lots of weight)... but works MUCH better and ride very smooth.

 

Have a similar issue. Sometimes they balance and sometimes not. It all depends on reaching a certain speed in a linear motion. if you need to slow down before reaching that speed, you're better off stopping, and restarting again. not very practical.
Maybe a combination of the 2 would be something to try. throwing 6oz of beads in the tires and then balancing them normally. that way if you ever lose a weight it would compensate temporarily until you can get them rebalanced or make up for mud/snow accumulatoin, etc

 

13 ounces of Dynabeads in each of our 42" Kevlars mounted on ATX Slab beadlocks. We had issues getting anything machine balanced over 37" so we didnt have much of a choice but to look towards beads. After a year of use no issues with balancing.... even at 80+mph on the highway

To be honest, I dont know how true/round our Kevlars run. Obviously if they are known for using very little weight then the beads dont have a huge impact on our application.

 

I know that in the past (10 years ago on my TJ) a shop was struggling to balance a set of 35's on AR wagon wheels and they ended up balancing the rims first and that worked. In the old days you would unmount and remount 90 degrees off to determine the best location prior to adding weight. So I know that rims play a big roll too.

 

that makes perfect sense and is the proper way to do it. unfortunately, most tire shops have lazy techs who slap the tire on, throw some air in it, balance and voila!

 

I have my 35" MTRs balanced at Americas Tire Co. And they get it right every time...they use the Hunter something or other balancing machine, I had seen someone mention the hunter machine in another thread so I checked which they use and it was the same...I don't know if the machine they use to balance makes a difference?