Tire balance

I had a new tire mounted last week. Picked it up today and the idiots (didn't feel like dealing with them) balanced it with stick on weights stuck on my polished part of the rim. I've never balanced my tires but seeing as how they had 1/2oz on each side close together could I just put 1oz in the middle (or 1/2oz on each side of the crown) and still be balanced? I always thought they balanced down the middle. If so I can at least black out the weights with a magic marker so not noticable. Thanks...

John, Don't know if doing what you want to do will work or not.But if ya don't like the weight on rim try this! lose the weights and use DYNA BEADS on inside of tire (if tubeless) check it out at www.inovativebalancing.com hope this helps regards Duke

Thanks, but mine are tubeless.

Putting a 1 oz. in the center of the rim between the spots where there were two 1/2 oz. weights will work fine. I always mount and balance my own tires and I use the stick on weights in the center of the rim the way you plan to. (BTW, my opinion, backed up by physics, is that Dyna Beads are the modern equivalent of snake oil.) Ed

The Product Dyna Beads is for tubeless tires!

Don;t know about it being snake oil having never used it, 650ed having used it must not have had good results, so guess I'll not try it, was on my list of things to try. my list is one shorter Thanks 650ed for the tip. regards Duke

The beads are snake oil, I'm 99% sure, however on the GL1800 Goldwing forum guys swear by them, not one guy, but many of them, bunch of them actually. Are they all:
1-goofballs that believe in something that ain't there? Or
2-maybe balance is not that critical on a motorcycle tire, or
3-maybe they do have that magical power to herd to the light point of the tire?
My choice is a combination of 1 and 2, but guys swear by them. Nobody laughs at them as snake oil on the GL1800 forum, well I do, but the rest seem to believe they work.
I guess someone here ought to bite the bullet and try them. Trouble is I never balance a tire and wouldn't know the difference if it was balanced or not and have not had a problem.
I'm not kidding you there are guys there that claim they get nearly twice the miles out of a tire with dyna-beads, no cupping which is inherant on a big wing. I call bull, but who knows?

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Bluemeanie wrote:

I had a new tire mounted last week. Picked it up today and the idiots (didn't feel like dealing with them) balanced it with stick on weights stuck on my polished part of the rim. I've never balanced my tires but seeing as how they had 1/2oz on each side close together could I just put 1oz in the middle (or 1/2oz on each side of the crown) and still be balanced? I always thought they balanced down the middle. If so I can at least black out the weights with a magic marker so not noticable. Thanks...

not a tire/balance pro, but i dont see how putting weight in the middle will achieve balance....many moons ago when a young pup, i used to do tires at a classic british car shop.old school....2 big ass tire irons, a manual bead breaker, a rubber mallet and a bubble balancer...i was always taught if it was an ounce out, use 1/2 and 1/2 about 2 inches apart....think of it as a piece of pie with the narrow part the centerline of axle (the point)
and the edge of the crust on each end where ya put the weights.....never had anybody come back....out of curiousity, i went out to garage, and the guy who did mine
went the same route........just my .02

I haven't used the beads, but here is my logic:
If I stick a bunch of BB's in my tube (or tire if tubeless) according to Isaac Newton they will settle to the bottom of the tire everytime I stop or slow beyond a given speed. As I accelerate, I suppose it's just possible that they will eventually evenly disburse themselves to just the right spots to balance the tire and then stop there, but why would they; how would they know where the light spots were? Seems to me they would just roll around inside the tire at random and if the bike maintained a constant speed long enough the beads might stop rolling, but what power would make them stop at the light side of the tire thus balancing it with the heavy side? But even if they were able to roll to the light spots and stop, everytime I hit the brakes, stop, or accelerate they will move around more or roll to the bottom of the tire when I stop. It seems like they would actually create an imbalance every time you slowed, stopped, or started from a stop. Having said all that, I might be tempted to pour a tablespoon of snake-oil in the tire to see if that might work. I suspect that the folks who use them simply don't have tires that are far out of balance so they feel fine regardless of the beads not because of them. I make the following request (challenge): Anyone with a tire balancing machine put a tire on it that is known to be out of balance then insert the beads and measure the results. Did the beads put it in balance? Then put a perfectly balanced tire on the machine and insert the beads and measure the balance to see if it goes out of balance. Ed

I agree 100% Ed. Makes no sense, just like the Slime liquid balance crap. Makes no logical sense at all that they could do anything close to balancing a tire.

my z1 have no weights on them and smooth to 130 fast as i been.i'm go to new tire on in the next few weeks and i don' want lead on my rims not after i clean them, i'll let ya'll know.