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Airsoft bb tire balance still a thing?

YotaAtieToo

YotaAtieToo

Thick skull
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Everyone used to recommend this as the way to go for off road tire balancing. I haven't heard much about it lately.

I have a little 96 4runner on 285/70r17 and I've always had issues with keeping them balanced. I have a feeling the tires may be slipping on the rim a tiny bit when running low single digit pressure in the snow, throwing the spin balancing out the window.

Been driving this thing more recently and the out of balance tires are terrible on the freeway.

I could probably just get them re balanced and be good till winter, or I could try the bbs?
 
Fuck those bb's. They hardly work, make a ton of noise and generally make a mess inside the tire.

Why you running single digit psi in the snow with no beadlocks?
 
Mark you tires and rims. If they are slipping you have to fix that by using high tack, or knurling the rim or both.

Yes they help. Counteract works ok too.

Spin balance is still the best but worthless if your tire moves on the rim
 
SLOWPOKE693 said:
Fuck those bb's. They hardly work, make a ton of noise and generally make a mess inside the tire.

Why you running single digit psi in the snow with no beadlocks?
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It's basically a stock 96 4runner with a 1" lift:laughing:​​​​​​

IMG_20200318_115639.jpg
 
I used BBs in the past and they worked sometimes. It was really weird sometimes they would get stuck in the wrong spot and shake even worse, hard to explain. I was underwhelmed and would never do it again.

Get beadlocks and get them balanced and dont look back!
 
SLOWPOKE693 said:
IMO you still needs beadlocks if your going to be running that low a pressure, stock or not.
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Not my first rodeo pal :flipoff2:​​​​​​

​​​​​​Been doing it for 4 years without blowing a bead. Worst case, I have everything to set a bead with me. I just am aware of what I'm doing, and sometimes have to make a muti point turn just avoid steering sharp when coming down a slope.
 
Here's most of what I know about dynamic media balancing via airsoft BBs, proplyene glycol, and water:


ExWrench said:
12-27-2013, 09:56 PM

Beadlocks, Rim Painting, and Airsoft Balancing

<snip>

I’ve used airsoft BBs for balancing before (in 255/85/16s on my Tacoma), but this time I added some propylene glycol.


The propylene glycol makes the beads redistribute a lot better than they do alone, and prevents dangerous clumping in ass-freezing weather.


AIRSOFT BBs: you don’t need anything “premium”, but don’t use the biodegradable, dophin-safe Prius-compatible ones.
I like the .20 gram BBs because they end up being almost exactly one ounce of weight per “fluid ounce” which makes the math a lot easier. :D
The propylene glycol has a density close enough to water that weight ~ fluid oz., same as the BBs. This would be hard to fuck up. :rockon:


I used 8 oz. of BBs and 6 oz. of propylene glycol in each tire.


I’m sure someone has covered the shit out of mounting tires on beadlock rims, so I’ll skip that. The measuring cups and a funnel made adding balancing media easy.


<snip>
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12-28-2013, 11:09 PM

EODtech said:
Ex that was a kick ass reply! With your Tacoma how well did the beads hold up with keeping the wheels balanced?
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ExWrench said:
12-28-2013, 11:09 PM

The 2007 Tacoma was my first time phookin' around with airsoft balancing, and I went back to traditional balancing when I sold it.
I put 10 oz. of .20 gram airsoft pellets/beads/BBs in each of the 255/85R16 (~33.5x10.5-16) BFG MT KM tires on the Taco.
.
1. 20% of the time, it was PERFECT!
2. 20% of the time, it was HORRIBLE!
3. 60% of the time, it was OK



A little insight into how the BBs act:

The BBs fall down inside the tire until about 25-30 MPH, where they transition to staying spread out against the inside of the tread.
The BBs stay flung out against the inside of the tread until you come to a stop (or close to it).

If I hit the transition speed in the Taco while going through a corner (like a curved freeway on-ramp), I would have a horribly unbalanced tire.
Occasionally, the beads would not redistribute properly after hitting an odd bump on the freeway and I would have a horribly unbalanced tire.
Either of the two scenarios above would require me to pull over and stop to regain good balance, unless I lucked out and hit a bump right to clear it up.

On the Jeep, I put 8 oz. of .20 gram BBs and 6 oz. of propylene glycol inside when I mounted the tires on the beadlocks.
Later, while resolving death wobble and shimmy issues, I added 8 oz. of distilled water through the valve stems.

wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==
​

This brought me up to 22 oz. of dynamic balancing media in each tire, and the last 8 oz. did not make a huge difference.

1. 20% of the time, it is GOOD to perfect
2. 20% of the time, it is BAD (but not horrible)
3. 60% of the time, it is OK to good


The addition of propylene glycol got rid of the Taco's problem of the beads requiring a ridiculous level of intervention on my part to get unfooked sometimes.
I do not worry about the transition point with my current setup, so the glycol is an effective lubricant (and anti-freeze).
However, the BBs have a worse axial imbalance on average in the 12.5" tires on 10" rims on my JK than they did in the 10.5" on 8" rims on the Taco.

In summary:
  • Adding lube to the BBs totally helps them correct for any RADIAL imbalance more quickly and accurately.
  • Narrower rims and tires are the only way to minimize AXIAL imbalance - the BBs cannot compensate for that.
  • A tall, narrow tire on a narrow rim would probably balance almost perfectly using BBs, glycol, and water.
  • Dynamic media balancing is great a lot of the time, but not all of the time, and sometimes it just sucks.
This coming week, I plan to pull the tires, vacuum and clean out all of the balancing media, and check the rims for axial and radial runout.
I believe that Trail Ready did a good job but I never checked the rims for machining accuracy, so it's time to verify that TR earned the faith I have in them.
If and when the rims pass my inspection, I will reassemble the tires and static balance them using a bubble balancer and tape weights.

I know that my MTR/Ks have some radial runout, and I changed rims when the tires had 15k on them, so they bring a bit to the shimmy party.
However, I had no major problems before I moved the tires over to my beadlock rims.
I had an immediate onset of death wobble on the shakedown run of my new rim/tire combination.

The death wobble itself was the result of a blown out flex joint in my front lower control arm, but the onset was from the new chassis dynamics.
Specifically, I now had my tires on wider rims with less backspacing. This provided the leverage to bring the shimmy to instigate the wobble.

Shit, it's late - time to bail on this. I'll get into the rest of that crap later.
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I used to use the bead kits on amazon and before that it was innovativebalancing. They go right in the valve stem and worked pretty good. Tires still wobbled a bit in the 30's but smooth as hell on the highway. This was with multiple sets of tires.

downside was having to bring a small shop vac and vacuuming them out when getting new tires. Sometimes the mechanic was willing. I also had to request them to use the least amount of tire lube as possible to keep them from sticking to it inside.
 
ExWrench said:
You're the one complaining about losing balance, possibly due to tires slipping on the rims.

Not your first rodeo, but maybe try one from on top of the horse :laughing:
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Rodeo as in running low pressure in the snow rodeo. I honestly haven't had much experience with an off road rig that also sees 75+ mph.

I'm at the tire store now, going to do a regular balance and mark the tires. We won't see real snow for another 4 months or so anyway.
 
YotaAtieToo said:
Rodeo as in running low pressure in the snow rodeo. I honestly haven't had much experience with an off road rig that also sees 75+ mph.

I'm at the tire store now, going to do a regular balance and mark the tires. We won't see real snow for another 4 months or so anyway.
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Cool, hope it works out for you. :beer:

I haven't fawked with dynamic balancing for 7 years now, but the writeup I copied here is solid info.
 
ExWrench said:
Cool, hope it works out for you. :beer:

I haven't fawked with dynamic balancing for 7 years now, but the writeup I copied here is solid info.
Click to expand...

If it doesn't, then it's probably the small town tire shop I use for this rig. That and the wheels are the only 2 common denominators since I'm on the 2nd set of tires with the same problem. ​​​​​​
 
Buy an inexpensive bubble balancer and a box or 2 of weights so you can do it yourself. BBs suck but I have a bubble balancer and an expensive spin balancer. They are equally effective i99% of the time.
 
I have 35x12.50 KM3’s on 15x8 alloy rims on my TJ. I had the tires balanced with stick on weights when new and they were about 90% good. After a few wheeling trips aired down to 8 psi and 3,000 miles or so they started the shakes. I left the stick on weights in place and added 4 oz of copper coated steel BB’s, they are perfectly balanced now. That was about 3,000 miles ago.
 
I have Airsoft BBs in my 37s with no porblems out of them. A little bit of a pain when mounting them, but nothing major and it's not like you have to do it all the time.
 
Have airsoft bbs in my tires on my little xj. Seem to work as the tires seem to balance. No other balancing.
 
Back whenI was in college I worked at a tire shop. A guy came in with some of those to put in his tires. He had a super clean 93 Dodge diesel daycab flatbed 4x4 5 speed he had 285-75r16 a/ts on alloy wheels. He read online how much to out in so we did. He took it for a drive just to see how it was and came right back. He said it was ok till he hit about 45 then it shook the truck almost off the road he said he mashed it and it smoothed out at 75. He wanted them out.

We put one on the balancer just to see and it threw a different weight each spin. Somtimes a lot 7-8oz sometimes not as much 2-3 oz but it always wanted it in a different spot.

So I think they are snake oil. Just like balance rings on a big truck. My company spent almost 20k on my truck chasing a shake it had. I drove it for about 2 years shaking apart. When my steers needed changed I talked them into Michelins and while I was at it I pulled the balance rings off. When you spun them by hand you could hear the beads hang up. :shaking:
 
KungFooMASTA said:
Back whenI was in college I worked at a tire shop. A guy came in with some of those to put in his tires. He had a super clean 93 Dodge diesel daycab flatbed 4x4 5 speed he had 285-75r16 a/ts on alloy wheels. He read online how much to out in so we did. He took it for a drive just to see how it was and came right back. He said it was ok till he hit about 45 then it shook the truck almost off the road he said he mashed it and it smoothed out at 75. He wanted them out.

We put one on the balancer just to see and it threw a different weight each spin. Somtimes a lot 7-8oz sometimes not as much 2-3 oz but it always wanted it in a different spot.

So I think they are snake oil. Just like balance rings on a big truck. My company spent almost 20k on my truck chasing a shake it had. I drove it for about 2 years shaking apart. When my steers needed changed I talked them into Michelins and while I was at it I pulled the balance rings off. When you spun them by hand you could hear the beads hang up. :shaking:
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A spin balancer will never show the beads working, the wheel has to move up/down slightly to distribute them properly.
 
Kyle said:
Out of round? I never had any slip at 6-7psi.
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How do you know? It would only take an inch or two to really fuck the balancing up.

I'm at 3-4, I've seen wheels just sit and spin in a tire in the snow before :laughing: mostly Interco brand shit where the beads fit loose.
 
Kyle said:
Out of round? I never had any slip at 6-7psi.
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thats because youre not having enough fun :flipoff2:

43"sx stickies definitely spin on the rim without mechanical beadlocks, i popped a tube on my inner air beadlocks first trip out when the tire spun on the rim

its a great fuse for not snapping axle shafts though :laughing: :flipoff2:
 
I use antifreeze. Works great, never clumps or freezes like BB's. Can fill it through the valve stem.
 
All the vehicles and the tubeless motorcycles have BBs. Work like a charm. Zero issues.
 
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