Hi fellas. I have a 1979 F250 4x4. It has old school aluminum slotted wheels with 9.50x16.5 inch tires on it. I am having a heck of a time keeping the wheels balanced. The weights will slide around a bit, they just don't grab the rim well. I tried stick ones but they hit the caliper. Does anybody have any experience with the stuff you put right inside the tire? Any advice will be a great help. It's always awesome the info on here. Thanks fellas.

 

I run balance beads on my semi tractor.......they work well.......after the tire warms up. Most noticeable when it has set for a while in cold weather. Never have tried them on a pickup yet.

 

Adhesive Wheel Weights

Do a quick search for 'thin wheel weights' and you get results such as the above. Thin wheel weights are made, and a good balance guy should be able to mount them in a location where they do not hit the caliper. Sounds to me like you need a different tire shop.

 

Run balancing beads inside your tire. And for god sakes, choose a different tire shop if they can't even put external weights on properly. Sounds like you have one heck of a poor shop you've gone to.

The one thing to look out for is "cheap" balancing beads that have some sort of liquid in them. Lots of guys have trouble with the beads breaking or becoming stuck inside the tire (likely from abuse/offroading).

Double check with the shop you take it to, and ask them about the beads they use. If they're not 100% solid beads (whether it be plastic or silicone), then you don't want them. Only solid beads are what you're after.

Just as an aside, I ran my 285/75/R16 rim/tire combo on the highway at 110 km/hr (roughly 70 miles/hr) and had zero vibration/noise/wobbling issues. My tires couldn't be balanced by external weights because they were +10 oz or -10 oz on any given tire. Tire shops can't legally balance something that wobbly with external weights (in Canada anyways), so they used 3/4's of a bag of beads in each tire. Your application will not be the same amount of beads because you're running stock size tires.

I just ran these for the first time on my build. I've heard all the horror stories online, but I didn't have any of those symptoms you hear about.

I'm running 285/75/R16 tires (basically 33x11x16) on my rims and the balancing beads worked great. The shop told me they threw in 3/4's of a bag in each tire, so it turned out that I paid for 3 bags worth of beads in total (each bag is 1 lb I believe but I could be wrong on that).

Agreed. He needs a different shop.

 

If you can find someone in your area that does "tire trueing" I'd go that route, it was pretty much the only way to balence the old bias ply off road tires before radials became the norm. It basically spins your tire/wheel on the vehicle and shaves off the high spots.

 

Thanks fellas. I was thinking about the balancing beads, just wondered if they worked. I have yet to find a real good tire shop in this area, the fella I have been using is local and easy to get along with, I doubt he even knows about the thin weights or the balancing beads , but I won't know until I ask. I will be looking around Boltgun for someone that does tire trying, I never heard of it before. Thanks!