My Dynabeads Experience
My BFG KM2 35's were taking way too long to get here on backorder. I have been waiting for over 2 months so I opted to change my order to 315/70/17 BFG AT/KO's.
I had read about Dynabeads in the forum in multiple places and thought I would give them a try. I bought a total of 4 packs, each with 10 ounces of the off-road beads that have to be poured in when you mount the tires. I spent about $70 with shipping etc.
I took the beads and instructions to the tire store to have them installed and told the tech's to take all existing weights off the wheels, and not to balance anything. They did like I said, poured in the beads, and mounted the tires......and off I went to see if it worked.
30mph......steering wheel shaking.
40mph......still shaking
got up to 65........still shaking
I gave it a day and half, and still had steering wheel wobble.
I called the number on my dynabeads reciept, and asked what I should do.
This is what was explained to me:
There are two kinds of tire/wheel imbalance.....Radial and Lateral.
Evidently the beads only help with radial imbalance, but not lateral.
He said that one of my front tires must have a lateral imbalance.
He told me to go back and have the tire shop balance the tires. He said that the beads would throw off the balance machine a little but they should be able to to do it.
Well....the tire shop added about 4 ounces of weights to each wheel and my steering wheel is fine now.... no shake/wobble.
They were able to get each wheel/tire to within 1/2 ounce of 0.
This leaves me asking myself....why did I buy these beads? To NOT have to balance the tires? But, I did have to balance them. I dunno.
Since these are new tires and I never drove on them without beads, I don't know if the beads are really helping or not. I will say that it drives like a dream now. However, you should consider that I went from Mickey Thompson MTZ's to BFG All Terrains...BIG difference.
I'm not sure what to think now, they might be helping, they might not.
You can draw your own conclusions.
Last edited by Sharp3502 : 06-19-2008 at 09:46 AM.
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