Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Bead balancing for truck tires

I had a new set of tires installed on my Dodge Ram and the tire guy mentioned bead balancing vs. the clip on lead/zinc. I went old school (lead/zinc) while researching the bead balancing. After researching I'm not sure. It seems that physically the beads would always be on the bottom of the tire as the tire rotates. I'd be curious about any experience that others have had with the bead balancing.

Only one thing with the beads, but not a truck.
I had a rear tire put on my Valkyrie motorcycle
and the man that had the shop had went to
using all beads. I'd never heard of it, and I
was in the automotive industry for 4+ decades.
I was sceptical, and he said that if I wasn't
satisfied, come back and he'd put on a new tire
and find some lead to do it the old fashioned way.
Nary a problem at all after that with the tire
or balancing. He specialized in road/highway
motorcycles, so I trusted his judgement.
I still don't know about a 4 wheeled highway
vehicle though. I don't know how qualified
some of the people I see working in tire
shops are. I've worked with some great
techs, and some ham handed pinheads

Good Luck

I've never tried them but I've read up on them a bit. They don't start to work until you hit about 30 mph. Then you can slow down and they'll maintain balance until you're going slow enough for them to fall out of the spin. This is repeated every time you stop.
They work better on tall tires. Low profile car tires will likely still need lead weights.
Using the right amount of beads is critical. Too much or too little can lead to premature tire wear and rough riding.
A lot depends on the suspension. Everything I read on that is in engineereze and out of my level of understanding.

I use them on all my semi tires, but that's a different application all together.

Something I never heard of. How do you know how much to put in different size tires?

The tire shop will have a chart showing them how much to use for your tire size and type of suspension. Don't try to guess it. There's a lot of intense math involved.

Tire wear on the inside is a concern I have had with beads. Does anyone know if the beads sloshing around in the tire as you reach the magic speed that holds them centrifugally against the outside of the tire rubs the interior enough to cause damage over time? Are the beads in a bag and if so is that what protects the tire?

For our semi tires, the beads come in a bag that gets tossed into the tire before it is mounted. The bag disintegrates in the first mile or so, and then the beads just do their thing. We’ve never seen any tire damage from the beads and the casings are accepted for recapping like any others.

Inside tire damage isn't an issue. As the tire starts to turn, the beads move to where they need to be to stop bounce. Then centrifugal force keeps them there until you slow down enough for them to fall out of place. It's repeated every time you stop. So, the beads aren't moving most of the time.

Not used the beads, however do use centramatic balancers. Have been happy with them. The balancers also help keep wheels clean of brake dust.

We bought a 2011 GMC in 2019. Found out later when I bought new tires the custom wheel caps that came with it were rusted to the wheel and the tires couldn't be balanced with traditional weights because of it. The shop used the beads (they mentioned it was usual a semi-truck thing.) It has worked but it takes a few revolutions before the beads balance out the tire since at rest they are at the bottom of the tires.

I have beads in my tires and haven’t had an issue with balance. It looks a lot cleaner too.

I checked when I put new tires on my Chevy 2500HD this past week. Discount Tire said they mostly put them on racing tires or high speed. Advice was not to us them on my truck

I have used them on trailer tires and my motorcycle. No complaints.

had them in some 37x12.50x20's on a jeep gladiator and they were ok, if you came around a corner and got into it they wouldn't position and you'd need to come back down to a stop and start out slow again and straighter before getting into it to get them where they should go, not sure there was a better option though for those big boots and those black rhino Mozambique aluminum wheels? I don't like them...would rather fixed balancing that isn't a fussy little bitch when you're scootin and bootin

So, Discount tire says they use them on race cars and for high speed driving, but they won't work on fast cornering and acceleration?

We have never used bead balancing on any of our racing tires and I haven't heard of anyone using them. Ours is drag racing if that makes any difference.

Follow up to my initial question. I did try the beads for two months and then had them removed and went back to the old style balancing method. I tried to like them and wondered whether what I was feeling through the wheel were the new tires. Then I had the truck into another shop for some power steering work. The owner of the shop always test drives my truck to make sure everything is right. His only remark after his drive - "you need to get your tires balanced." And I did and the truck now feels much better.

Tried them in one vehicle, didn't much care for them.

Have them in a couple cycles and love them for that application. Think in a trailer tire, as mentioned above, they'd work well also.

I got talked into them on one of my trucks about 25 years ago and it was a clusterfuk. Maybe the technology is better now, but it sucked and we took it back and had it cleaned out. The tires had condensation in them and the beads turned into a lump of schit. This is a perfect example of trying to build a better mouse trap. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.