Just saw an infomercial about Dyna Beads. Not sure why I bothered to read it, just my natural curiosity I guess. Like all the miracle products they can make it look like it’s the best thing that has come along since the peanut butter cup. I just can’t see how they could possibly work, it seems to me that centrifugal force would cause them all to gather in one spot. I see no physical reason why the beads would be distributed more heavily toward the light side of the system. If these actually worked then Hunter would be out of business and the tire stores would only have to have a hopper full of ceramic bead in their shop. I think this one belongs in the same basket as the 100mpg carburetor and such.
"When we tug a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world" ~ John Muir "When we tug a single thing on an old truck, we find it falls off" ~ me Some TF series details & TF heater pics
10-4 good buddy. Thousands of 18 wheelers are runnig them as we speeak. I don't know how they work, but it does. If you use the beads, don't forget to use the correct valve core or you'll lose all your air next time you check your tires.
They do work good for heavy tires. They are along the same lines of the sand like material you can add to tires. They are more for a vehicle that runs constant highway speeds. It takes a little while to get them in balance and up to speed, not much good in a stop situation.
I have been using Counteract Brand from these guys http://www.alltiresupply.com/a-SFNT.html for about 10 or 15 years and it has completely eliminated shimmy and uneven tread wear. I use them in truck and trailer tires. I operate extremely light bulk hauling equipment, under 24,000 tare, which is very susceptible to tire hop and the beads have completely eliminated. I recently sold my heavy tire balancer for scrap iron because it hadn't been used in so long. I haven't tried it in smaller tires because I have been trading pickups before the the original tires are worn out. I think they do work in smaller tires because some of them find their way into the driver's tires.
thanks for that link Ken, more info for the project
there you have it Skeptical Denny, might not be as useful for normal passenger or LT tires, but I've got them on the list to consider for daBus, along with tire pressure monitors, after I find the spendy wheels and tires
"When we tug a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world" ~ John Muir "When we tug a single thing on an old truck, we find it falls off" ~ me Some TF series details & TF heater pics
Think I will try the Dyna Beads in the '47 Cessna tires I don't balance them and they do shake while rolling above 25 mph. The motorcycle guys sure seem to like them.
I bought a 48' trailer once that had 3 golf balls in each tire. I suppose they were there to balance them. I only found out about them as I replaced tires on it. It was funny, they were worn absolutely slick when they came out.
'65 C-10, 65 L-60, 65 C-80, 72 C-60 & and a bunch of old Chevy cars. Never time to do it right, always time to do it over.
I had a 48' trailer that had golf balls in the tires as well, some of my buddies put golf balls in their trailers tires on their logging trucks,they also welded cable around the inside of the duals to keep from picking up large rocks.
Mearl- There is actually an applicator used to fill a tubeless tire. Also, when I was still driving a truck, the tire shops would just throw the bag in the tire before they set the bead. I don't believe you'll want to use them with a tube, actually it sounds kind of dangerous with a tube.
Here is a link to the cost. http://www.alltiresupply.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc? Well, I just figured out that the link goes to their home page. Go to the home page and type counteract into the search and it will find the listing with prices.
They come in plastic bags and you just throw the bag in the tire. However, when we take tires out of service, we scoop up the beads and keep them in a bucket and reuse them. I don't think I would attempt to put them into a tube.
Its not the milage that matters, its more of the tire size and how you drive. Less then 45 mph every so often, I doubt you see much difference. If, on the other hand, you have large mud and snow tires or cruise on the highway a lot, then you will see some improvement.
In my OTHER life of offroading with the Jeep club, we use tend to find cheaper alternatives.
In our 33" mud tires we use Air Soft BB's. About 10oz in each tire. These are significantly bigger, so I'm not sure if it's even a possibility to get them in a tubed tire.
They work great, re balance everytime you speed up.
...I'm with rustednuts, I had never heard of them either. No harm intended here but if they are that good why haven't we heard about them before now?? ....... am I that far out of the loop????
Today, I was checking with "my tire guy" for some tires for my son-in-law. I ask Jimmy if he had ever heard or seen them and his answer was "oooh yeah" but he did not offer any more info either good or bad. I let the subject drop.
Cosmo, I like the idea/fact that they make the tire wear even and I like what Bigtonka said about the tires re-balancing when you speed up. That would take care of having to have tires re-balanced as the lead weights don't move or rebalance. That makes sense. MY QUESTION before I run off half cocked and get the balancing beads is this.... When going slow do you notice any tire bounce or any indication the tire is not balanced until you speed up???
Since the tires I checked on will go on a pickup he drives long trips in every week these may be a good trial for us. I'm interested because as Cosmo indicates, evenly wearing tires will last longer and the savings will offset the cost of the beads, plus a smooother ride.
I was joking about the tube, the beads I have seen are also in a bag. You throw the bag in and it breaks shortly after you start driving, letting the beads go to work. One other thing, if you break a bag on the floor, it's like ice and they're very hard to sweep up.
'65 C-10, 65 L-60, 65 C-80, 72 C-60 & and a bunch of old Chevy cars. Never time to do it right, always time to do it over.
I’m sittin’ on your side of the fence Alvin, when something sounds to good to be true then it’s probably not! I still say if these worked all that well then they would have put Hunter, Coats, John Bean, FMC, Allstates, Hoffman, Sun, Atlas, well, the list does go on and on, and the beads would have put them out of business long ago.
It’s no small outlay to fill up four pickup truck tires with these things and I’m not sure if I would want to go thru the expense of pulling off the balancing weights from my tires, inserting the beads in my good tires and then having to dismount all four tires to clean them out, remounting and rebalancing the set if it turned out to be just black magic.
I’ve heard it voiced a couple of times the they aren’t affective for stop and go driving. That makes now sense to me because they seem to take aim at the motorcycle community and being a rider myself, I can assure you the we do plenty of stop and go driving as do the truckers. The pop bottle demo with the beads in it is not spinning all that fast and they claim that it smooth’s out with in a few turns of the drill. In fact I would give it a try if I had some beads, I was gonna try it using some Daisy BB’s that I had here but after a week of looking I still can’t find the box with my Red Rider BB gun in it. http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/140778245/large
So if they indeed did work as advertised they would have to even out the balance within a few turns of the wheel or your bike or semi-cab would be jumping all over place from one red light to the next.
I might just give them a try on one wheel just to test out the claim, but I certainly wouldn’t go all the way unless the experiment was a rousing success.
Tubes have been mentioned. If,,,,,, they did work in a tubeless tire I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t work in a tube as long as you were using the proper sized tube for the wheel and tire and there were no folds in the tube.
My thoughts about throwing the whole bag in the tire… The reason these are supposed to work is that they are free to roll around inside the tire and seek the light spot. A plastic bag left inside would not be free to do that and would in all likely hood prevent the spheres from rolling to where it wanted to go. So it doesn’t seem logical to me to leave anything inside the tire other than the Dyna-Beads. The valve stem insertion tool that comes with the bead seems like a reasonable way to add them to a mounted tire. I don’t see why there would be a problem with that, it’s no different than tuning an hour-glass upside down.
Still, this has been an interesting discussion and we could use more of that around here as things have been pretty slow lately.
I'm with Denny on this one. In the mid 1950's, when tubless tires were fairly new on the market, the sealing material inside the casing would sometimes shed (apparently), and form beads or marbles of various sizes inside the tire. When attempting to balance a wheel/tire with a spin-balancer, the machine would show a different weight location, and often a different weight amount after each spin.
I have never seen this problem revealed with a bubble balancer (off-car balancer), because when the bubble is centered after afixing the weight(s) and the wheel/tire returned to the car, any recurring unbalance would not be noticed until the vehicle is driven again. Then, back to the shop...
With either balancer, spin- or bubble-balancer, attaching a large amount of weight to one side of the wheel might correct a static unbalance (circumferential unbalance), but would/could introduce dynamic unbalance (side-to-side unbalance), which may not be noticed until the vehicle is driven again and the necessary conditions reached.
Maybe the subject beads work to correct dymanic unbalance, but I'm skeptical that they would work for static unbalance.
So if they indeed did work as advertised they would have to even out the balance within a few turns of the wheel or your bike or semi-cab would be jumping all over place from one red light to the next.
no Denny, they do not stay in one clump at the bottom until you get up to speed, they immediately start 'distributing' themselves around the tire, and as the out-of-balance spots show up the beads migrate away from that area and collect opposite it - centripetal force reacting to the non-uniform circular motion
"When we tug a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world" ~ John Muir "When we tug a single thing on an old truck, we find it falls off" ~ me Some TF series details & TF heater pics
Boy, I’m really trying to understand the physics behind this but the mechanism for distribution still isn’t clear. The Dyna-Bead site does claim, as you’ve mentioned twice Red, that Centripetal force is the mechanics behind the balancing beads. Most people have never heard of Centripetal force unless they’ve taken a physics course and it’s somewhat difficult to understand. The instructor in this video explains Fc about as good as any that I’ve found.
I still would have to see the beads in action before I would be convinced. There are tons of theorys out there that sound logical till you put them to the test.
It would go a long way if I could see the pop bottle demo in person.
DG
Last edited by cletis; 01/08/20124:47 AM. Reason: removed off topic content
Well after searching for a week I finally found my Red Rider Carbine and the BB ammunition that I needed to conduct my experiment. (Black Bart had it!)
I tried it with a handful of BB's then kept cutting back the amount and they always slung out to the high side and added to the off balance till the bottle failed at the neck. So much for Balancing Beads in my book! Denny Graham Sandwich, IL
I have been using Counteract Brand from these guys http://www.alltiresupply.com/a-SFNT.html for about 10 or 15 years and it has completely eliminated shimmy and uneven tread wear. I use them in truck and trailer tires. I operate extremely light bulk hauling equipment, under 24,000 tare, which is very susceptible to tire hop and the beads have completely eliminated. I recently sold my heavy tire balancer for scrap iron because it hadn't been used in so long. I haven't tried it in smaller tires because I have been trading pickups before the the original tires are worn out. I think they do work in smaller tires because some of them find their way into the driver's tires.
Crenwelge, seems to be the one with the experience here. Seems he may have been on to something long before us....maybe because that is where the most bang for the buck is on bigger tires. (Well, motorcyle guys swear by them..at least some of them.) I'm still a bit skeptical about them but so was I when the TGI beams came out for home construction. I may not be from Missouri but you still have to "show me".
Last edited by cletis; 01/08/20124:46 AM. Reason: removed off topic content
I'd call that experiment confirmation bias Denny, I'm surprised that you would try the 'experiment' with such a lumpy bottle as a substitute for a smooth tire inner surface, especially the lumps and recesses in the bottom ... and that you think metal BB's have any similarity to tiny, perfectly round ceramic beads
I also note that the Counteract Brand that Ken uses is Canadian
"When we tug a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world" ~ John Muir "When we tug a single thing on an old truck, we find it falls off" ~ me Some TF series details & TF heater pics
I know for a fact the beads work, we have been using them for years in bus tires. One bag for decent running tire, two if it vibrated, problem solved! A plastic bottle filled with bb's is nothing like a tire, not even close.......
.....now we're getting down to the nitty gritty!! More experience with da beads.
Hey Joe, I ask my nephew if they ever used them at the highway dept and he just laughed and said none of the state dept. trucks hardly ever got over 35mph. I couldn't help but laugh.
...and I know buses are not governed back to 35mph like when I drove in the 60's
Workin’ as fast as I can Bill. Lets see if we can un-bias it a bit. I had tried this on a half dozen different shapes and sizes of bottles and kept the spheres in the smooth part, not the convoluted sections. Some of the bottles didn’t have stiffening ribs in them some did. I did not add a weight to one side like they did in the demo, I just used the natural out of balance condition of the bottles.
This one is fuzzy because it’s rotating at 1,500 rpm and the bearings are all just bouncing off one another in the bottom third of the flask, none ever did stay stuck to the surface. Again, something that I would expect them to do because it’s just like a logger rolling a log. http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/140787748/large
So, the only thing left is to actually get some of the balancing beads and try the same experiment.
He Joe, you’re to quick for me, didn’t see your reply but here is the Dyna-Bead demo and there taint a bunch of difference in our experiment, cept I taint got a bag of them beads to throw in the bottle. Denny Graham Sandwich, IL
I don't have any personal experience with the balancing beads, but with the small physics and engineering background I think all the high points have been hit. The beads work great for mechanical vibration correction for objects with a steady high velocity (highway speed driving) or a large radius (where the beads have a faster distribution rate from rest). If you spend a lot of time at slower speeds or have smaller tires, the beads don't move quickly enough into position to do their job effectively during stop and go traffic. In the latter case, it's best to have the static weights on the rim, ready for any speed.
So here's the $64,000 question: Where is the threshold? How big a tire do I have to run to make this effective for my wallet, or how often do I have to be driving on the highway?
Before the economy went south, we logged almost 2 million miles a year with Counteract Beads in our tires. Speeds varied from stuck in San Antonio rush hour to 72 mph on open highways. 90% of our traffic back then was running empty 50% of the time, and thats where an out of balance situation really shows up. 6,000 lbs on 8 tires with 110 psi will really cause axle hop with out of balance tires. We never experienced such a situation with the beads at any speed. I don't think there is a speed threshold. As for tire size, I don't know. For many years I have traded pickups before the original tires wore out. I just leave the factory weights on them and don't worry about them. My drivers helped themselves to the beads, but none of them ever reported the results.
Well it's beyond me Ken, but there certainly must be something to it with all the positive reports that have been posted here. In four pages now I haven't heard of one bad experience from anyone that has actually used them. Think I might jump over to the Triumph forum and see what the biker boys have to say. But, I know when I’m beat, so I’m gonna throw in the towel and I'll get enough from Dyna-Bead to do the rear tires and put them to the real life test.
I've had, as you describe it, (the axle hop) ever since I brought Bluebelle home in '05. She’s a total stock 3604 and I’ve got the hop when she’s empty and loaded. One time just out of curiosity I stopped by the local lumber yard and bought eight 100lb bags of play sand to see if a load made any difference, it didn’t. The hop comes in right around 40mph and is gone by 45mph. It was there with the brand new set of bias plys on the split rims in spite of balancing by several different tire dealers. That lead to my replacing them with later single piece rims and Cooper Radials and the 40mph hop was still there. I've indicated the hubs and the rims and the tires themselves and they are well within specs for run out and out of round. Had the radials also balanced at several dealers the last time on a brand new Hunter Road Force balancer and the 40mph hop is still there. I've run the pressure low at 32psi and up to 65psi which is where I run it now and that makes no difference, she still does her dance at 40mph.
So as a last resort I think I might just give them a try, worst case scenario is that they don’t work for me and I'll be out a hundred bucks and an afternoon spent at the tire shop cleaning out the tires and putting the lead weights back on.
Good discussion and just think, nobody addressed me using three or four letter words. Thanks for the input guys. Denny Graham Sandwich, IL
Denny, looks like you've tried everything and then some.
Is it possible a brake drum may be out of balance? I really wouldn't see how, but never know.
If changing tires and rims didn't change the hop or the speed at which it occurs and goes away then what about the axle itself? Could it have a slightly bent axle? (And I'm just throwing something out, you may have checked this)
Is the axle in proper alignment with the front end? (Again, you may have already checked this)
But I don't know if I would spend money on beads if different tires and rims didn't change anything. I guess if it does work you would be far ahead.
I don't think a 12” Brake drum could cause this much hop at 40mph. The rear hubs are driven by the axle with the full floaters and they roll on their own bearings on a spindle which is part of the axle housing. All of the has been indicated with very little run out well within acceptable limits.
No she doesn’t dog walk and alignment is good. Also have had it up on sturdy jack stands several and run it up to speed to check vibration with the tires off the road. Vibration is definitely coming from the tires for some reason even though they run true and are in balance. As I said, speeds pre and post 40mph are fine, no hop and just the normal road noise and vibration normal to a truck of this era with stiff leaf springs and beam axle. In fact if you accelerate up thru 40 mph to 50 or 55mph you don’t even notice any hop or shudder. Only manifests itself when you hold her at the speed.
Made the commitment and ordered eighty bucks worth of Dyna-Beads so we will see in a week or two if they can work miracles. If we get snow I might have to wait till the spring thaw to test them out.
I’ve always felt that this vibration was some sort of a harmonic that is set up in the frame/suspension at that speed. Something like a speed wobble of a tire which you can drive out of if you encounter it.
apparently they were 
.... and I'd say it has more to do with 
