Tire Balance Beads

I tried a product called Dyna Balancing Beads in my new tires and I am amazed at how perfectly they work!! Totally eliminating all external weights and just using 1oz of beads in the front tire and 2oz's in the rear tire with perfect resullts! My local tire shop suggested them and I'm glad they did!
There is a website that explains this product in great detail and the owner was very generous with his time when I called to ask many questions about this product before I used it. The bike I tried them on is a K1200LT.

www.innovativebalancing.com

Not a Vendor

Just wanted to let people here know I'm not a vendor trying to sell something. Just a fellow rider passing along info about a product that I recently found and it works great.
I posted this info on another Beemer site I belong to and got nothing but paranoid B.S. replies about being a scammer!

BMW Luxury Touring Community was the site incase anyone was interested

Bummer to get hauled over the coals for something like that. The product just needs a fair review by an outfit like Motorcycle Consumer News.

BMW people can be such hard-asses.

Fred
'02 R1150R

Is there a link for the sanke oil please? I have been looking to buy some for a while now....hehehehehe

Been lots of different balancing stuff for tires, one was a goop you
squirted in. They used to sell a disk with a tubular rim that mounted
behind the wheel, it had some oil and metal balls. This stuff must really look
different if you ever had a blowout! I've never had any problems with
tire balance with weights and continue to use them. Stuff like this isn't snake oil, though.

I'm a little skeptical...my thought is that centrifugal force would make the heaviest part of the tire stick out the farthest during rotation, and of course the beads would then settle in the stop most distant from the center of rotation- which would be the heavy part of the tire, which as just mentioned would be spinning at the 'highest orbit.' This of course would make the heaviest spot even heavier. What am I missing here?

Balance Beads

I'm not sure how they work but they do.
I tried them on my Z71 truck tires that never seem to get balanced right and now there fine.

The dealer I bought my last set of LT tires suggested I try it free of charge and would balance them traditionally if it did'nt work. I did'nt know at that time they could be used in motorcycle tires. The offroad store I deal with locally suggested them to me for my large offroad tires. I really think the bike is even smoother than it ever has been with the beads in the tires.

Being a bit of a skeptic myself I contacted the company to ask many questions about using them for motorcycles and they told me they were getting very positive feedback from riders. Then I did a very intense web search to find out as much as possible before trying them. I had nothing to loose by trying them and much to gain if they worked.

Do they produce any noticeable noise?

Are they arranged on a string?

Balance Beads

They are completely quiet.
They are very tiny, small enough to fit through the valve stem.
It only takes 1oz for a front tire and 2oz for the rear.

Just so you know ALL BMW riders aren't going to rip you a new one, I think I am going to give these a try. Thanks for the tip - it came at a good time.

Uh... why not just pour 4 oz of BB's in there?

Have you ever ridden without balancing a tire at all? I am and I can't tell a difference. I have to wonder if they are just making you think it is doing something when mounting the tire without balancing (and without the beads) would do the same thing.

Just wondering,

j.

Just ordered some of these beads. Traded e-mails with someone at the company and explained that I have a front tire that needed more than average weights to balance (mounted at the dealership) and they are very confident that I can put the beads in and do away with the weights.
I should know how the product works by sometime next week. Thanks for the heads up.

Ladies and gentlemen, the beads work

I just had new tires put on about 6-700 miles ago. The Beemer store told me the front tire needed a total of 8 1/4 oz wheel weights to balance and the balance job was crappy. I read this thread and contacted the company. He told me to put 2 oz of the beads in my tire and take the weights off.
Did that today and pulled out of the driveway very, very skeptical about what the results might be.....The beads work like a champ. Bike is smooth (at least up to 60 mph, will test higher speeds tomorrow.)
As of this writing, I am one happy customer.
I am going to tell my dealership about this product. Why use wheel weights any more???

Balance Beads

I'm glad they worked for you. You should use them in the rear tire as well.

My question is, is there any independent testing information about the product? The evidence so far is anecdotal. I am not an engineer, as I have stated many times before, so I do not know if this is real or not.

There are many modifications that I am willing to experiment with on my bike. If they donÔÇÖt work they damage paint, maybe mechanicals and definitely my wallet. I can live with those. I am cautious about things that I think could put me at risk when I am on the road. This one is outside of any experience or skill that I currently have. I would like some more independent information before changing to it.

This is very interesting. If this product works as claimed it would make changing your own tires much easier by simplifying the balancing part.

There have been several products like this through the years for car tires. I have never seen one that just used beads, that is very clever. Yes these products work for steady state balance. The frequency of the tire's vibration forces the weight to keep moving until the vibration is eliminated.We used a special ring fitted to the rim with a viscous fluid and beads to eliminate tire vibration in cars for the Silver State Classic. The rings worked for that application.It is almost impossible to balance tires for a car that will cruise at speeds in multiples of 60 mph. That would be a tire that stays in balance at 60, 120, 180 mph. Race cars pass through these speeds quickly ( Formula 1, Lemans ) or rarely see all these speeds (Nascar). The problem with the bead things is that if you change speeds rapidly they may pass through a vibration at an inopportune moment. Whether that applies to your riding, I don't know. I would like to see MCN test these. They look kind of risky for tube tires.

How do they work?
A weight is used on a wheel to balance out and weight imbalance when a tire is mounted. How do the beads find the light spot on the wheel when centrifugal force is throwing them to the outside of the tire spread out??

HOw do they work?
From the website FAQ page (down near the bottom):
http://www.innovativebalancing.com/news.htm

"How it Works .
The physics of how/why the free mass inside the tire automatically knows where to go is hard to conceptualize. The best way to understand why this works is to exaggerate the problem.

Imagine there is a 5 lb weight fixed to one place on the tire. When you spin that tire to normal highway speeds, it will be so terribly out of balance that the tire would probably hop off the ground with every rotation. The axis of rotation is actually moved away from the center of the wheel toward this extra mass because itÔÇÖs pulling the whole tire with it as it spins. The free moving balancing weights inside the tire are not affected the same way by these forces. First as you get up to speed, centripetal force will make the balancing weight stick to the inside of the tire. Then the force of the unbalanced weight on the tire will move this balancing weight away from the imbalance. When enough of the mass is opposite of the imbalance, the vibration disappears and the axis that the tire is rotating on returns back to the center.

To give you another example to explain why the balancing weight moves away from the imbalance and balances the system, think about what happens when you accelerate fast in a car. Anything thatÔÇÖs loose moves to the back of the vehicle. This same force is created on an unbalanced spinning tire. The imbalance is jerking the tire sending the free mass inside away from it and the centripetal force holds it here."