The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Big Bolts Balancing 22.5" Tires: Beads or Spin with Weights?

Hello! I hope that you and your families are all doing well during these challenging times.

I have a question about balancing the larger 22.5" tires. My plan is to use a good quality, name brand 9R22.5 for my 53 GMC 2-TON Big Bolt. I was hoping some of you might have some recommendations for balancing a large tire like this. I also ask because the truck is using a fairly heavy tire for a vehicle that will only weigh about 6,600 pounds and change when empty. I'm guessing that balancing will help make the open road more comfortable when the truck is empty and they should last longer as well.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this.

David

Hello David. I am retired trucker/maintenance supervisor/tire person for a trucking outfit in central BC Canada. At the time I retired we had 65 tractor units and 250 tri axle trailers and about 50 5 ton delivery trucks. All we ever used was the balancing beads and never had any problems as long a there was no moisture inside the tire. If the tire is ever off for a repair, the beads can be reused. If weights are used, if the tire is ever off then the balance is disturbed In my opinion, for 22.5 tires beads are the way to go

My '50 COE Chevy 2 ton weighs 7400 lbs empty (grain bed with lift). I scrapped my RH-5 split rims and had more modern 22.5 inch wheels adapted with the proper bolt spacing and hub diameter so I could keep the stock axles. Thus, I have 9R22.5 tires. I opted to not balance them at all, figuring that the top speed of 55 mph wouldn't be fast enough to be a problem with such a tall tire. I figured I would balance them with weights if I noticed. I have never felt anything so have never further addressed the issue.
Kent

Thanks for the reply GasHog!

I only recently learned about the balancing beads. I was very suspicious at first, but I found some great reviews on a RV forum about the beads. It seems the 9r22.5 tire is a common tire size on some of the larger RV models. One member talked about finding a direct supplier for the beads and says they work great on his RV. I'll share the source here in the hope it's helpful to others too:

Tire balancing beads from the source

Thanks again!

David

Lightholder's Dad,

That is interesting. I've read also on another forum that a lot of commercial trucks don't even balance at all. They claim the tires are so well made (the good ones) that balancing is rarely needed. Because this truck will see 75 miles per hour for long distances, I think I'll give the beads a go. It would be interesting though to try without any balancing and see what happens.

Thanks for the reply!

David

I have some experience with balancing beads, and yes in theory they work on a narrower tire. The problem is that you have no idea how many ounces of beads to put in, plus your will never be able to balance them again by conventional methods. What I did on the front of my 50 4100 was just use the free spinning front wheel hubs to balance them by trial weights opposite of where the tire would stop rotating at BDC. Pretty simple method.

I had to use beads on one of my small personal trucks that had 38x15.5 mud tires on It, daily driven. The tire shops told me they couldn't balance them in the traditional manor with weights because they were too big. I never had a problem with them in 40k miles, no shimmy/shake or anything else.

When it came to my big bolt I did a lot of reading and found that like you said David lots of places don't bother doing anything to balance them. In my opinion the $5-10 for a bag of beads per tire is cheap enough to not have to take the chance of having to pull the tires off again to add them after i could possibly take the truck for a ride and discover that they need to come back off to have beads installed. The amount of work and time involved for me personally isn't worth the chance if I did it myself. Definitely not worth it if I have a tire shop do it.

I'll add that there are plenty of sites out there that have detail list of how many ounces of balancing beads a tire should have in them. I am currently in the process of replacing my 20" split rims to 22.5s. My rear tires are off and I'm cleaning the rusty hubs up before I put my shiny rims on with new tires.

Thanks 4100 Fire Truck and Pvmt-Pndr!

This is all fantastic information.

I recently learned that the better tire spin balancers out there balance tires on two planes instead of one. It explains why on some spin balanced tires, there will be a weight on each side of the tire at the same radial location, but each weight is a different size. This type of balancing corrects tires that have a heavy spot that is more on one side of the tire than in the center plane of the tire.

I imagine the balancing beads do not correct balance in two planes. I can now understand why the narrower the tire, the better the beads work. Still, beads would be a TON better then nothing.

What I find appealing about using the balancing beads is it opens the door for mounting and balancing tires myself. I will always carry a spare tire with me on long trips, but knowing I can remove and repair a tire on the side of the road myself, and not lose the balance (beads) is a plus. The spare will only be used if the tire is somehow damages beyond repair.

Thanks again!

David

Here's what little I know about beads. I maintain a fleet of tour buses in Alaska (About 350 of them) We run a 315R/22.5 tires on most of them. I have a tire balancer so I prefer hammer on lead weights. That being said, many of my locations do not have a balancer machine and have to rely on beads.
How do beads work? Vehicle stopped, beads at the bottom of your tire. Get up to 35-40 MPH and the beads settle into the position they need to be to help true the tire. (lots more science inserted here....)
Lets talk brands of beads. Equal vs. Counter-act. Equal does pretty much what I just mentioned.
However, Counteract is a glass bead that when it rolls inside the tire creates a static charge to the imperfections of the tire, which is really cool, because when the vehicle stops the bead still clings to the imperfection, regardless where in the tire rotation it may be! You (in theory) will have a balanced tire even at 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 MPH! OK, now why I hate this stuff! If you EVER plan to dismount your own tires, HAVE A SHOP VAC HANDY!!! This junk it 10 times worse than walking on marbles on your shop floor when you dismount a tire!!!! Break one bead, suck it all out of the tire and finish dismounting the tire! Also this product is very expensive.
Neat stuff, but I like my old school lead! Good luck!

We use Counter-act in our school bus fleet at work and really like it. We have problems with the front air brake S-cams and rollers sticking, so we are always pulling tires and drums off. With hammer on weights, we had to rebalance every time, now we can throw the tires back on and hit the road without any vibration.

David,
Look at Centramatic wheel balancer beads. I’ve been researching them for myself. Large trucks give great reviews on this product!
Jim

Thank you all for the replies! All good stuff.

In my searching, I have seen those Centramatic wheel balancing rings with beads. They even have them in our common 10 x 7.25 bolt pattern. They sell them for the P30 chassis:

Centramatic Balancing for the P30

Even though this truck project of mine will see long cross-country journeys, I will not be putting that many miles on it over the next 15 or so years.

Still, balancing the tires in some way is on the to-do list. No point in ruining a $2,000/$2,500 set of tires because of imbalance/unbalance. Might have used the wrong word there...

David

Wonder if those will fit 22.5's also, look like it.

Ed

I was as Centramatic dealer about 20 or 25 years ago. They work fine in warmer weather, but when we got into cold weather in the Midwest the oil in them would get thick and the guys couldn't hardly keep them on the road. I junked several hundred of the Centramatics. We then used balancing beads and they worked fine until someone aired them up somewhere that had moisture in the air line. I now run all 445/50R22.5 Michelin on drive and trailer and 295.R22.5 on the steer. We don't use any form of balancing and get better tire mileage than we ever have and the drivers don't complain.