alignman88
I'm Awesome
Weight limits typically are established by the tire manufacturers as percentages of the tire weight and mass. Most shops those amounts stated are pretty standard to monitor good practices.It's been over 25 years since I did a lot of balancing, so take that into account. For cars I think 2.5 oz was our max and for trucks we typically considered 5 oz too much. However, deflating, breaking the bead, and turning the tire 180° is a lot of work. I think the modern strategy is just to throw more weight on it and hope it balances.
Our race trailer got a load of balancing beads in the tires, and they made a huge difference in how smooth the trailer towed empty. If it's so effective, I wonder why the industry at large hasn't adopted balancing beads.
The balance beads/media aren’t so much balancing beads as they are a dampening agent that slightly changes the frequency of the tire at speed. Think about this, is it a harmonic balancer on the crankshaft or is it really a harmonic dampener that is balanced on a crankshaft????
Tires and suspensions share the same frequency ranges. 10-15 Hertz for both if I remember right. Disturbance + frequency of tire matches frequency of suspension you get a point of resonance letting the disturbance transfer through the chassis. We all know a vibration we feel at 60-65 mph may go away at 67 mph and up. Increase in speed changes frequency of tire, suspension frequency stays the same so no point of resonance to excite the transfer components to cabin. I’ve got spreadsheets from tire manufacturers with frequencies at different speeds. Real propeller head stuff LOL.
It all has an “effect” but balance isn’t it, more like it calms the forces so they don’t match up and get to the cabin that you feel. It’s magic dust. Put one of those tires on any computer balancer and you’ll have a wheel weight rodeo.
I think the reason it doesn’t see more traction in the market is because tire manufacturers don’t want anything inside the tire because inner liner “could” see minor degradation which is a safety hazard, as well as can you imagine how many different sized bags of media it would take for a dealer to cover all the passenger tire variations. Plus now it’s one more thing that Stumpy the tire tech could do wrong, maybe cut the bag blast the bead in place and create an air leak from media + lube between bead and rim (seen that one back in the 90’s on commercial trucks)
No doubt the trailer pulls smoother the tires are dampened slightly and not matching point of resonance with transfer components. I always balanced my trailer tires, and would easily get 100,000 miles out of them, and to boot change less light bulbs on the trailer and no fatigue cracks or failures anywhere on the trailers.
Me and my TED Talks… jeeeezzzzz what a dork.