Tire balance beads

[westro]

Does anyone have any experience with using tire balancing beads on your towables, TT or 5Ws with tandem axles?
Thanks for any Info.

 

[cookie]

My tire guy said that the beads work well in heavy tires so I said let's try them.
One trip later he was vacuuming them out and rebalancing with weights.

Peace
Dave

 

[CoveredWagon]

I've used Centramatics for 5 years. Easy to install. Look at their videos.

 

[travelin2]

I tried beads in the previous set of sailuns. Very uneven wear pattern. Current set of tires from Discount Tire are balanced with weights. Over 20K miles still looking good

 

[westro]

Thanks folks for the info regarding the tire balancing beads, appears to be somewhat of a mixed bag of experience... I do have a friend that used them in his Motorcycle tires but he has been balancing with weights as of late, also know there are truckers using them as well but don't know their experiences. Since I've got cousins that are truckers, I might ping them to see if they have an opinion, though that might be an unfair comparison to the load range H Sailuns on our Newport.

Appreciate the responses, Thank You!
Bob

 

[thewanderingeight]

Is there any improvement over just using the normal weights? I had mine balanced when I had all the tires changed. I watched the guy doing it since he was handing the tires directly to me, it only took a few minutes per wheel.

 

[westro]

Is there any improvement over just using the normal weights? I had mine balanced when I had all the tires changed. I watched the guy doing it since he was handing the tires directly to me, it only took a few minutes per wheel.

I don't think there is any improvement vs normal weight balancing, just an alternative method. If I were changing all the tires I would have them balanced then as you indicated. At this point I was looking for a way to balance ours as an alternative to pulling them all off and hauling them to a shop... not such an easy task.

 

[cookie]

My experience was that the beads did not do their job. Wound up with a vibration after new tires with the beads.
Had the beads pulled out and conventional lead weight balance. Well lead, zinc or steel.

Peace
Dave