I apologize if someone has posted a discussion on this topic before but I was unable to find anything on this. History - for years I have used either centramatic brand, centrifical bead discs on wheel or generic beads that install inside of tires on freight carrying and offroad trucks for the purpose of wheel balancing difficult to balance wheel /tire combinations and offroad tire tread mud pickup. It works perfectly. Throw out all the external conventional wheel weights, install the beads or discs and if you got the ounces of counterforce material right - perfect. After considerable expense with very competant tire service professionals and lesson learned with those not so competent I have been unable to effectively balance the wheels on my 86 C4 with stock wheels correct tires for the range of speeds driven. No one has been able to get it right for the range of driving speeds most folks drive cars like this on public highways. Has anyone tried the bead balancing on their Corvette? It is brutally simple but before I experiment it is worth asking if there are high speed drawbacks. Although it works well on trucks typically they are not driven for long as fast as a sprited drive in a sports car. Thanks.

 

My AFS 17x11 balanced with 1/4oz on the outside back of the wheel and 3/4 oz on the inside of the spokes. No problem with that.

 

I am in the tire business and we use balance beads for the medium truck tires. They work just fine. However, I wouldn't use these on a passenger car. Medium and heavy truck tires are much more isolated from the steering wheel than cars, so while you won't feel one ounce of imbalance in a truck tire, you will on a car, especially a sports car that is tuned for good steering feel and response.

I'm not sure where you have had your tires balanced but if you haven't tried it, you might want to go to a place that does road force balancing. This puts a load on the tire so it knows how much the tire is pushing back against it. This is the tire's "spring pressure" measured in pounds. Afterward the lateral runout is measured to see if the wheel is bent. Typically anything over 18 pounds on car tires is considered high. To correct this, the tire is broken down and spun on the rim to line up the high spot of the tire to the low spot of the wheel. After that they are spin balanced in the typical fashion.

Our shop charges at a minimum $35 per tire for this service. The rates you will find will probably be all over the map. On my own C4, one of the tires was measured at 50 lbs of spring pressure. It took us 8 dismounts and remounts (as low profile tires don't turn on the rim easily) to get it down to 4 lbs. I had no more problems after that.

Also know that any time you raise or lower the tire pressure, the road force will change for better or for worse. Make sure if you have it done you tell the technician what pressures you want each tire to be, or else you'll likely waste time and money.

Hope this helps you out.

 

"Wulf312" describes pretty much what I always thought the principal of "bead balancing" is or does. It dampens the imbalance so that it's not as dramatic feel through the steering components. That's my maybe worthless "generalization"!

"Wulf312"also explains pretty well "road-force". His explanation of a single tire experience is an extreme but it's certainly something that could be encountered. If it were a "new tire retail purchase" after a couple attempts another tire would be substituted, the tire that displayed the problem could actually be placed back into stock with notation made as to what was observed and resold. Maybe not with all brands BUT some.

It could be interesting if he returned and maybe explained a bit more. Is he an "operator" or just a well informed sales guy is certainly unknown but it's pretty well explained.

 

While what I encountered with my 275/40/17 Nexen N3000 tire was a bit on the extreme side, I saw the same thing in the same tire in the same size that we installed on a Camaro. The customer had purchased the tires from Tire Rack and we installed them. He had the same problem as I did, and to the same extreme. When I called Nexen to see if they would warranty the tire for the customer, they were not interested in road force measurements. They covered it, but the measurements had no influence on that decision.

Most tire manufacturers (if you're calling in authorization for workmanship/materials warranty for vibration) do not care about road force numbers. This includes the mainstream manufacturers like Michelin, Bridgestone, and Continental. This is for the same reason that I mentioned above. I was able to get a 51 pound tire down to 4 pounds after much trouble. The car drove great after that. The tire engineers know this is possible as well.

The selling facility would not be able to put the tire back into stock as new. If it were resold it would be considered a "new take-off." Any new tire is technically considered used the moment it is mounted on a wheel, regardless of whether it ever touches the ground. It would have to be covered under manufacturer's warranty for vibration and another tire would be installed. This usually has to be done within 30 days or no more than 1/32 of treadwear because if a tire is "defective" and causing vibration, it will be evident immediately upon driving the vehicle. There are ways around this and we do that from time to time. If there are exceptions to this I have not encountered them yet.

Yes, I do run a retail tire store. I installed them, along with other mechanical repairs and maintenance, for 6 years. I've been selling tires and service for the last 6 years and have extensive training from Michelin and Bridgestone. I've been doing this for a bit. Just reinforcing my advice and knowledge in this area .

 

On most new tires there is a dot or circle on them which should be lined up with the valve stem. I assume this is the lightest point on the tire to make balancing easier. I had to tell the tech about it as he had never heard of it. One 315/35/17 road forced at 1lb and the other at 4lb right off the bat. The tech said he had never seen one that low. I will be getting new front tires soon and hope for the same good results.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for returning back to the thread. There's just many misunderstandings regarding balance and what's required "sometimes" to achieve satisfactory results. In '73 the Goodyear acceptable limits were very strict and of course there was no "road-force" so the tires needed the "relocation on the wheel" to sometimes get to that minimum. Most retail dealers then actually complied with the requirement. I don't recall the weights from my first experience with it but I watched a tire tech doing a tire/wheel of mine, did a relocation once and then removed it, pulled another tire from stock did the mount balance and sent me down the road. I asked about it and he told me that's the way we do them "ALL"! The "weight dots"? I don't recall when they first appeared but mid to late 70's I believe. I had nearly forgotten the experience I had with the Goodyear, a few decades ago.

I believe the only other tire quality issue I had was a "winter" experience with Blizzaks when they were first released. That was a misunderstanding by most at the time as to the requirements of FWD vehicles. My situation was corrected reasonably after insistence that I could not have possible had the experience that I had mentioned to them. Shortly after my experience the label on the Blizzaks were changed to "4 required for FWD" - two winters were absolutely the worst experience I ever had - winters X 4 on FWD great.

 

Never heard of this - balancing beads so I did a search and found a short video that simply explains it:

Do most tire places offer this option?

 

I tried the beads on a troublesome used 32" jeep tire set once. It works, but it also doesn't. A better description would be that it balances well at a steady speed, but any rate of change of speed (accel/decel), then you feel a bit of imbalance.

If it worked on lightweight car tires, everybody would already be doing it.

 

Thanks to all. The road force balancing discussion and bead application potential impact on rapid variable speed on momentary imbalance is helpful. In November the last tire pros I went to showed me in person their measurements of round and true-ness of the wheels alone and again when the new tires were re-mounted
and aligned to the wheel. All looked perfect with negligible deviance and they compared the measurements to be well within specs of origin I do not know. They did note that A LOT more oz of weights were necessary on one front and one rear wheel tire comination than expected leading me to believe tire or wheel or both were excessively imbalanced prior to any of their balancing procedure.
I will chase down a shop that can work on this further rather than install beads to mask an issue. I just noticed the car may have? been optimized for "crowned" roads as the distance from the bottom of the right side frame both front and rear are almost 2" higher than on the left side. A complete alignment was done in this state and handling is superb with the exception of imbalnce raising its head to varying degree from 55-75 mph.

 

The dot on the sidewall is supposed to mark the heaviest spot on the tire. This is supposed to be matched up to the lightest spot on the wheel, which is assumed to be the valve stem location in most cases. This is a good place to start when new tires are installed. However, I have seen numerous cases where this didn't make any difference and the tire still vibrated or called for excess weight, but you have to start somewhere! If a wheel requires more weight than normal to balance on a new tire, we usually turn the tire on the wheel 180 degrees. This usually lowers the required weight to an acceptable level. If not, we will pull another tire from stock if we have one and try that, putting the other tire back on the shelf or return it to the distributor. If a tire shop doesn't have a road force machine, this is about the only thing they can do.

You are completely correct on winter tires and front wheel drive. My shop refuses to install two winter tires on a front or all-wheel drive vehicle. It is perfectly acceptable to do only two tires on a rear wheel drive.

 

dyna beads have been used on motorcycles for mor ethan 10 years. about 2 to 3 ounces inside of each tire usually does it. good for over 100 mph

I have a Honda GL1800 motorcycle , it weighs over 900 pounds, has a six cylinder engine with over 100 hp and I run regular motorcycle tire on the front and a car tire on the rear. no tire vibration problems from the extreme weight or horsepower and both tires are balanced using dyna beads.

I will use them on my '86 coupe when its time to change tires.

John

 

There's different installation procedures but I believe the one single requirement would be that the tire be "dry" inside so the use of lubricants to aid the tire mounting would need to be either eliminated or be very carefully controlled. For a typical conventional wheel/tire mount I don't believe I can see a positive "do this" vs. a conventional mount balance for a passenger car.

I've seen recommended weights for everything except "conventional metric passenger car" tire sizes. They also suggest the purchase of extra "just in case". What would you guess the weight requirement for either a 255/50-16 or maybe a 275/40-17. Now with the extreme section widths of the "performance" tires available I'd guess that might require considerably more? I'm not a "nay sayer" but I can't see the need or maybe the "why these beads"!

 

yes you need to be very conservitave in using any tire lub ewhen mounting. but the dyna beads are made of glass.

when using Dyna Beads you don't use any external weights on the rim.
makes for a clean looking installation. another benefit is the tire does not need to ever be re-balanced as it wears since the beads do that for you every time you drive.

tires that use externally mounted weights are out of balance the more the rubber wears off the tire.

John

 

Very interesting discussion. I remember seeing clip on rings filled with beads in the old J.C.Whitney catalogue.They claimed you never needed to balance your tires again with them installed behind your hubcaps.

What kind of tire places have road force machines? Are they mostly used in truck tire shops or are they available in auto tire dealers as well?

 

Road-Force capable dealers are here:

http://www.gsp9700.com/search/findgsp9700.cfm

Road-force is primarily used for automotive, light truck and SUV applications. All you want to know here:

http://www.gsp9700.com/index.htm

There's much more than just equipment involved to walk away from a road-force experience "smiling" - a skilled operator, patience and sometimes $$$'s are required. Is the road-force a required balancing operation for premium tires and higher quality wheels? That's debated but it can certainly indicate issues.

 

Thanks for the link

 

An interesting topic here as well as several well informed comments. Thanks for the information. However, I have a couple of comments/questions about “road force”, which we used to describe as “force deflection variation” or “variations in the loaded rolling radius.”

Most of my career was spent with a large vehicle manufacturer and we had access to some very sophisticated equipment including tire diagnostic tools. The equipment had the ability to determine which side of the tire was causing the force variations. We found that sometimes there was more that one “tough” or “weak” spot in an individual tire and that the variation was not necessarily equally distributed across the tread surface. So the force deviation might be more pronounced on one side of the tread than the other. I was only peripherally involved in this activity and never did learn if the stiffness variation resulted from the sidewall or the tread or both. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable that I will chime in with more insight about this.

Tires that did have more than one “tough” or “weak” spot would never provide a smooth ride regardless of the wheel-tire match mounting technique. Even when perfectly balanced, these tires would still rumble but the roughness magnitude would vary with vehicle speed. The only solution was to replace the tire.

Wheels would sometimes have differences in run-out when comparing the inner and outer tire beads, which then complicates the issue even more. It is not uncommon for the wheel’s tire mounting surfaces to have slightly different centers of radius and they might not necessarily be 180 degrees apart either. Vision the tire mounting area as being two different “hoops” with slightly different centers. Machined alloy wheels were universally more accurate in this regard than were their stamped steel predecessors.

Some vehicles are more susceptible to tire irregularities than others are and while a stiff suspension might be a concern, the overall vehicle harmonics are a greater significance. Interestingly enough, most of the tire vibrations which I was involved with were the minivans with suspensions which comparatively speaking, were quite soft. Also of some note is that torque converter lock-up was a factor as well. Seems that a locked TQ would transmit more bad tire stuff that would an unlocked one.

Have no experience here but some shops true (shave) tire treads so they are round and some folks say it improves things considerably. Also have no idea if Corvettes are one of the more susceptible vehicles when it comes to tire vibrations problems or not.

Anyway, just some thoughts –

Jake -

 

As others have already mentioned tire iregularities do occur, someone who ballances wheels for a living should know and look out for tires that are out of round or wheels that are buckled.

I have Nexen N3000 275/40/17 all round and have a vibration free vette, I could not be happier with these tires they grip like glue in the wet or dry.
I have come across various forms of tread seperation in Falken, Kumho tires and Bridgestone tires. Only Falken actually had their tires tested and wrote a letter stating there was a manufacturing problem that has since been sorted, they recalled a batch of tires.

I have the plain stick on weights on my wheels, as long as the wheel is cleaned before applying the stick on weights there is no problem.

I am always very fussy with tire ballance and wheel alignments, do not accept any vibration.

 

Thought I'd post as I've just tried the Centramatic product.

It's not on my c4, but on my 72 Camaro with the two-ton 'z28 mag' steel wheels (and oversize tires in back). I have a bubble balancer and couldn't eliminate the highway vibrations completely, though I was close. I just today mounted 4 of these balancing devices on it, and I am impressed. The Camaro is suddenly about as smooth on the highway as the Vette.

The Vette's wheels are so close to perfectly balanced I'm not sure I'll need 4 more, but I wouldn't hesitate to use them on it or anything else. I expected to be disappointed, but no way. They work great so far.

I suppose things like 'Rattler' harmonic balancers would be destroying motors if the method didn't work. Despite the cost I opted for these over beads, though I'm quite convinced now beads would work also.