Balance Beads

[CarlJensen]

Anybody use the balance beads in a fiver. I need to rebalance again and would like to eliminate this drill of pulling wheels.

 

[Midnight]

Aren't you pulling the wheels once a year to pack wheel bearings anyway? It may be a good idea, just be sure to use the correct vale stems.

 

[EB]

I use them in my gooseneck haul trailer. They work fine as long as your tires are good to start with. If you have flat spots or dished out tires, they will still bounce, it won't solve that. I'll second the correct valve stems, you will have a flat very shortly if you don't use the screened valve stems.

 

[CarlJensen]

I assume you are talking about the "filtered valve stems". I have the bearing buddy type spring loaded hubs that let me grease from a fitting. I do take all off every other year to check all bearings out, just thought the beads sounded great.

 

[terrywerm]

Carl,



I assume that you were referring to either a balancing material added inside the tires, or possibly the CentraMatic wheel balancers.



I don't know about the balancing materials added to the interior of the tire, but I do have experience with the CentraMatics, as I used to run them on my Peterbilts when I was still involved in the trucking industry. I had them on the steers and on the drives and they were great as long as you started with a good set of tires to begin with. I typically got 90 to 100 K on a set of steer tires before I pulled them off due to increased wear on the outside edges. After that I'd run the tires out on the drives during the summer months, just to get my money's worth out of them. I always pulled company trailers, so did not have the opportunity to try any out back there, but if they work as well there or on your fiver as they did on my OTR trucks, they are definitely worth the money.