racsw

Would the truck's front hub work for spinning, with a dial indicator mounted for runout?

Yes, it will work. I would probably not assume you have problems at the start, though. It's up to you.
It's more important to make sure the inside surface of the tire is clean and dry, and apply any bead sealant with a small brush, or better yet, a rag dipped into the sealant and wiped on the bead. ( no drips )
Then install the beads and take it for a ride. It will probably be fine.
I'm essentially lazy, so I don't troubleshoot unless I have to

Cheers,
Robert

zulusafari

Me too, but I also want this done right. My wife is on board with my new(er) truck, and even let me get the 19.5" wheels, but everything is a gamble. The rims are GM stepvan wheels, 4 handhole, 8 on 6.5" pattern. The GM rims have a noticeably larger hub pilot hole, which has me a bit concerned. Accuride lists them as Hub-centric, so I am nervous over trying to center them with the hubs, lugs, or a combination. I also am debating whether the clamping plates are actually necessary on my Dodge, as shown in the Accuride catalog. I have a set of them, but like the torque characteristics of the two-piece lug nut better than the cone-style. I guess I need to decide if the GM engineers designed the wheels with clamping plates, or if Accuride engineered them that way, and then make up my mind what I think is strong enough.

Thank you so much for your responses!!

BigBlue

Here's a copy of the email I got back from Robert concerning some balancing questions I had. I got it back very shortly after I sent it. I was surprised to say the least.


Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(bigbluedodge4x4@hotmail.com) on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 at 09:42:57
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your_name: Tyler

through: other

comments: Hi. I was looking at purchasing new wheels for my tires (I have 315/75/16's and the wheels are gonna be 16x10). I've got a 2500 2001 Dodge Ram 4x4 diesel. I was gonna use the balancing beads but was curious about something. Should I just buy however much weight is on the current tires and wheels, or should I wait and have them spin balanced with the new wheels to determine how much I need? Thanks for the help

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Hi Tyler,
These manufacturers keep coming out with all these new tires to make my life more interesting ;-)
I would recommend 8 oz. per tire, with maybe an extra bag in case you have a flat, or need a little extra, but 8 oz should work OK. I always suggest ordering an extra bag, not because I get an extra sale, but because if you need a little bit more for -any- reason, you have it without having to incure another UPS charge to get a small amount sent to your door. ( You don't have to order an 8 oz extra, it could be 6 oz, whatever...)

On the spin balancing question: That's up to you and your situation. By that, I mean that some folks buy their tires from on-line tire houses instead of a local dealer, so naturally, the dealer is going to charge you $5.00 - $10.00 per tire to spin balance them because you didn't purchase from him. In that case, just forget it and install the beads. If you aren't going to incur a charge, then it's always an advantage to have the machine tell you how much to expect from each tire, that way you can also become aware of the amount of variation between tires, something worthwhile to note. But if you don't have the beads on hand at the time of balance, you will have to run the tires with a vibration for a few days until UPS gets there, and that sucks, IMO.

Check the web site. We had a price reduction that starts today :-)

Hope that helps,
Robert

zulusafari

BigBlue -- Thanks for inserting that in your post! These guys sound pretty straight up! Like most people you deal with, but not always remembered. I feel I will probably be ordering this product when I get my tires.

Thank you to everyone for the advice and information!

BigBlue

I just got another email back from him as well. I asked what would happen if I put to much of the beads in and he said nothing. They will equally distribute themselves in the tires and everything will be fine. You can guarantee that when I go with my new wheels, I'm going with these as well.

zulusafari

I really am leaning so far this way, I am Horizontal! I am a definite do-it-yourself kind of guy, so the idea of self balancing my tires is appealing. Other than possibly having to get the tires ground round, this will make mounting the commercial tires/rims a complete home job!

fourwhls00

Another sucess story.....

I am running the ballance beads from innovative in my new H2 wheels/tires. I have only had them on about 2 weeks now, but everything seems to working out well.

The customer service was better than ever expected. I called and left a message on a Sunday afternoon, not expecting a call back till Monday. He called about an hour later that afternoon. He made a recommendation of 5oz per tire. My tires were not listed on his webpage. He then called back about an hour later and said that he had researched my tires and thought I should go ahead and get 6oz to be on the safe side, as too much would not hurt.

I ordered the beads online that night and received them Tuesday.

My tires are 315/70-17 BFG AT on 17x8.5 wheels.

ronster

I've been reading some of the posts about balancing beads and I thought I might share my experience with my new 19.5" tires mounted on Rickson steel wheels. I received the wheels and tires from Rickson mounted and balanced. They use Equal and lead weights. I had the wheels installed on my truck and felt a front end shimmy as soon as I hit the street. I thought this may disappear as I drove home, but it didn't. The 10 mile drive should have heated the tires and spread the Equal around. I called Rickson and explained what I was feeling in the steering wheel. Since this happened on a Friday, it was decided that I would try them through the weekend and see if things changed. Boy did they! In 3 days I swapped these tires around in more combinations than I like to think about. I ended up using my stock wheels on the front to identify problems on the rear. The 225/70R19.5 are no taller than the stock unit. Stuff like bouncing and vibrations coming from the rear was always there in any combination. Front end shimmy changed from slight to bad. I did manage to find the worse wheel/tires by installing my stock wheels/tires and installing a one of the new units on the left front and taking a 10 or 15 mile ride varying my speed up to 80 mph. I identified 3 wheel/tires that appeared to be worse than the rest. I called Rickson Monday and explained what I had found. The folks at Rickson are 100% customer satisfaction without a doubt. They assured me that they will do whatever it takes to make me happy. They have sent me shipping return labels for the 3 units and they are paying the shipping costs both ways, which is approximately $300. I'm sure this will work out, but what I found while searching for bad balancing was the characteristics of each unit changed from some vibration to no vibration. From no shimmy to little or mild shimmy. This almost drove me nuts! The 3 that I identified were always a problem. Rickson uses lead weights and Equal, so I'm not sure how well Equal works! Either the units are seriously out of balance and need both or the Equal is installed for the long term. I wish I knew. I post later when I get this resolved.

rattle_rattle

If I wanted to go with the beads or other "inside the tire" balancing, should the existing weights be taken off? I have one wheel with "lots of lead" on it.

zulusafari

How much lead? The recommendations I have gotten suggest to add up the weights and replace with the same or slightly higher amounts of beads. The only caveat would be if the amount of wieght needed was so high the beads wouldn't be able to distribute enough in the spot that needs it. Some times turning the tire on the rim can dramatically affect the balance, better or worse, depending on the heavy/low spots on the rim vs. the heavy/low spots of the tire. I only wish the standards for marking these conditions were standard accross the tire and wheel industry.

Mcmopar

I spoke with Robert also,

He was great, the only concern that he had was that one of my tires has more weight than the others, so he said to have it checked out for a broken belt or bent rim. Nice guy, once I get this figured out I am gonna talk to him again and give it a try.

racsw

When anyone has a tire with a lot of weight that is substantially more than the other tires, you may have a defective tire. The more aggressive the tread, the more difficult it is to control rubber density and thickness. Road tread is much smoother, hence much more uniform in overall balance.

Here's some misc. tidbits of experience:

1. If you have a vibration, swap front to rear first. ( one side at a time takes more work, but narrows the problem down to the problem tire quickly ) Front is extremely easy to verify whether the vibration has lessened or disappeared. If the steering wheel doesn't vibrate, but the truck does, you have moved the problem to the rear.

2. If you have located the problem tire, first mark the tire with a piece of chalk at the valve stem location, then break it down -carefully- so the beads don't come out.
Take a look inside.
a. Are most of them stuck to the tire? If so, some tire goop, spray or lube got inside.
Disassemble the tire, clean with alcohol, reassemble and reload with beads.
Throw the old ones out. One note: If one tire is like this, chances are the same
thing exists to a lesser degree in the others.
b. If they are all rolling around, then we have a problem tire. You'll need a spin
balancer for this part. Remove the tire, remove the beads, save what you can.
Now remount the tire on the wheel with the chalkmark at the valve stem and spin the
tire. Record the weight. Break down the tire and put the chalk mark opposite the
valve stem. (180 deg from it's original position.) Spin it again. If it lessens, you
have a heavy tire coupled with a heavy wheel. If it requires the same weight, but
now it's shifted to the other side, just the tire is heavy, the wheel is ok.
c. When it's on the balancer, watch the outside (road contact) tread . Does it bounce
up and down, indicating an out-of-round tire?
d. Watch side to side. Does it wobble back and forth?

3. Lastly, does the balancer, set to Dynamic Mode, indicate the tire is laterally out of balance? You can tell this on the steering wheel when driving. A regular imbalance that is roughly centered in the tire will vibrate up and down, or just vibrate. A lateral imbalance makes the tire shake from side to side, causing your steering wheel to shake back and forth.
Weights is the only thing that can cure this particular problem.

So... if the tire needs a lot of weight in comparison with the other tires, argue with your dealer for a new one. If it is out of round, has a a broken belt, some visual irregularity, or wobbles back and forth, do the same thing. If you have tire goop inside, clean it out, reload and go. If it simply needs a lot of weight and does not require correction for lateral imbalance, just add more weight. ( a common fix for BFG's )
If you have a lateral imbalance, correct for that, add a couple of ounces of beads for future tire wear, and go.

One other item. If you have "match-marked" tires, then the colored dot needs to be positioned at the valve stem.

Equal has ben around for a long time, and is popular with the big rigs for the most part. The problem with Equal is moisture. Take a look at http://www.innovativebalancing.com/news.htm about halfway down where it talks about "balancing powder", which is a reference to Equal.
Basically your tire must remain absolutely dry for it to work. If you have any moisture in your tires, you will have problems. The Dyna Beads from Innovative are not susceptable to "surface-tension clumping" due to their size and shape. (Now if you have "standing water" in your tires, maybe... )

Hope this helps a little.
R

infidel

Don't know if it's still the case but Equal used to require you use dried air to fill your tires.
What a pain especially if you 're on the road. That's why I don't use Equal.

ronster

Very interesting tips RACSW. One of the things I did do while testing individual tires one at a time on my left front was to spin the wheel. When I jacked up the front wheel, I would begin to try to spin the wheel. As the wheel began to spin, I would stop jacking and see how much tire would clear the ground before resistance. The distance from the ground to the portion tire that cleared would vary 0.125" to 0.5" or so. I don't know if this tells me some of the tires have high spots or low spots. The tires I have are the Goodyear G647RSA 225/70R19.5. They are M+S tires and they do have a fairly wide tread pattern. Rickson tells me I should not have ANY vibration, shimming, or bouncing, because they use the match-balancing method utilizing the Hunter GSP9700 wheel balancer plus the Equal. Although Rickson is 100% behind resolving the problem at their expense, I'm considering using a local shop to remove the Equal and re-balance them. If they have problems while trying to balance them, I'll know whether it's the tire or rim. I can then try one of the alternate brand of beads if needed. I appreciate the comments.

racsw

ronster,
Very interesting situation. Here's some thoughts I had.

If they used both lead weights and Equal, that probably means they found 1 or more tires had a lateral imbalance problem, so they had to correct that first, then add the Equal to account for any uneven wear down the road. If the tire was assembled correctly, and they only added a couple of ounces per tire, it -should- have worked ok.
The way this -should- have been done is to use the dynamic balancer to balance the tire completely first. That's the only way a balancer can do this. If they put in the Equal and THEN balanced, that's definitely a no-no. The large tire shops that handle Equal invest in the pneumatic installer so they can inject the powder through the valve stem, hopefully this is what they did.
If the tire inside was completely dry, and then installed the powder through the stem, you do not need any "run-in" to get the Equal to work, it should work right away. The only time you need that "run-in" period is when you install the product via the throw-in bags. They have to bounce around a few times before they break open and spill their contents.
Well, I have two possibilities that i would suspect.

One, somebody put the Equal in first, then put it on the Hunter. If this happens, the Hunter, as well as the Coates, will indeed tell you where to put weight, but it will simply be wrong.

Two, they balanced first, then installed the Equal, which is good, but the Equal has stuck to the inside of the tire and is throwing it out of balance.

In any case, the first priority is to open it up and look inside. If they used match-marked tires, you will see a colored dot -hopefully- next to the valve stem. If you don't, before they break down the tire, mark the tire at the valve stem, then mark the position and amount of each weight in relation to the valve stem. Remove the Equal, remount the tire in the same location as you marked it, and rebalance on the Hunter/Coates set to "Dynamic mode". If the balancer comes back with -approximately- the same weight/location, then the Equal was screwing things up.
If it gives you vastly different weights and locations, then they probably put the Equal in first, and then put it on the Hunter.
Of course, if the Equal is stuck to the tire due to tire bead goop, bingo...

I'm interested in the outcome, along with some others, I imagine.

Robert