Airsoft pellets to balance tires?

joshmarchand · **Posted:** Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:04 pm

Hey just wondering if any of you smarter and more experienced gents (and ladies) have any experience balancing tires with BB's inside your tires. I just came across a thread talking about it, but it seems that everyone there is rocking 35's or bigger. Yes, I am too lazy to sign up on their forum and this is a more specific crowd.
My questions are: is this application only for bigger mud tires?
Is it a good practice for daily drivers?
Is it an add on to an already balanced tire?

I'm not sure if I'm suppose to add links to other forums or not so I shall play it safe. But this seems to be an info chart:
http://www.imiproducts.com/lib/pdf/equa ... -chart.pdf

tjkj2002 · **Posted:** Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:12 pm

Tried it,got death wobble.Went bad to normal weights and all was well again.Not good if you have alot of turns in your drive or colder weather from my personal experiance with using airsoft pellets.

ihatemybike · **Posted:** Tue Sep 18, 2012 6:17 am

I use it. Works great after you have the right amount of weight for your tires. Can be a pain if you don't get it right the first time.

audiboy86 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:10 am

I have head of people using them on bead locks since a lot of tire shops won't balance them. And somewhere on here there is a weight chart to tell you how many grams of air soft pellets are needed.

KJ Willy · **Posted:** Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:09 pm

if for a larger tire then also think about Equal tire balancing

http://www.chemco.ca/Products/Wheel_Balancing/balance_powder.htm

the Good
It works.

Bad
Airing up and down you have to remove the valve stem to do it or the sand clogs the stem. (faster to air down removing the stem anyways)
airing up and down frequently you lose the beads and it clumps up some if you use cheap air compressor and air get in there.

Why I use it
Road force balancing was to expensive and hard to find
my 35's MTR/k on aluminum wheels would not balance without 20-40 oz of weight per tire.
the air soft pellets make some noise and still cause some wobble when starting off. (experienced from a another guy on 35's.)

tjkj2002 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:12 pm

KJ Willy wrote:

my 35's MTR/k on aluminum wheels would not balance without 20-40 oz of weight per tire.

You must have some bad rims or using stick-on weights,my 35" MT/R K's on 15x8 alloy rims do not have more then 6oz of weight on any of them.

KJ Willy · **Posted:** Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:13 pm

tjkj2002 wrote:

KJ Willy wrote:

my 35's MTR/k on aluminum wheels would not balance without 20-40 oz of weight per tire.

You must have some bad rims or using stick-on weights,my 35" MT/R K's on 15x8 alloy rims do not have more then 6oz of weight on any of them.

I had them all balanced good for awhile then crunched my Lower control arm and never realized it till I wore the front 2 tires to hell, bought 1 new one and used the spare and the new one, the old tires would not balance.

joshmarchand · **Posted:** Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:17 pm

Huh. So I still don't know if I should...

The KJ is my wife's and since she has steel wheels and at most will be running 265's I'll leave it. But my rig is a Sierra 1500 with 315 duratracs and it's got a shimmy at certain speeds and I really want these tires to last!! So I'm considering this option

dieselenthusiast · **Posted:** Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:38 am

I use dynabeads with all three of my rigs. Just to be on the safe side, my only suggestion would be to add 1 additional ounce to what is recommended. Dynabeads cost more, but they do not rust and they do not deteriorate, hence why they can be recycled from one set of tires to the next set. If your tires are already mounted, then you can add them through a funnel into the valve stem. Just make sure that you replace the valve stems with those that are made for dynabeads. The new valve stems will have a filter to keep the dynabeads free from clogging.

bugnout · **Posted:** Wed Sep 19, 2012 11:08 am

I ran airsoft beads in two sets of 245x75 R16 MTR's on my Liberty. They worked well. Only performance issue I noticed is that when cornering at higher speeds they would sometimes unbalance. once you get going straight again they balanced pretty quickly.

audiboy86 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:25 pm

Some of the buggy guys running 37s and higher run golf balls. The owner at coleworx told me even in his large haul trucks tires (F650 built to pull a 3 buggy tailer) he only runs 3 golf balls.

Airsoft pellets to balance tires?

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