simple question. do you take all weights off and add dyna beads? or balance and then add them?

i used them on my 03 ultra last year and was happy with them....for a while. i took off the weights, added the beads and things seemed fine. not a huge difference, but balanced. guess im just not in tune with my bike that much.

after trailering my bike one weekend, i started to get a very noticable low speed wobble. did a search and did everything recommended. didn't work. i then took the beads out and rebalanced my front wheel with weights and wobble was gone. couldnt have been something in the front axel? i guess, but it has given me pause.

sticking with the weights for now on my limited, but maybe i'll give them a shot again with my road king.

i think this is an interesting thread. have read alot about them, but still trying to learn.

tin

tin

 

I agree, at what speed did the low speed wobble occur? There has been more positive feedback than negative so I think I will give them a try.

 

I may try them but i will leave my weights on to start...I would think that starting with a balanced tire/wheel would be better...But Hey, i'm just a regular Schmoe, you know.

 

THis is going to be long so stop now if you are not into technical stuff. Let me say to Ican that I agree with what he has stated, but. I am a professor of Nuclear Engineering with a concentration in Physics. So I understand frequency and resonance very well. In a perfect world with all the equipment Ican talks about it is true that a perfectly round wheel/tire and a perfectly balanced unit in all axial and radial directions would be great and without doubt the best.

NOW, let's enter the real world since theory is great in a book or to try and prove how smart you are. We are NOT is a perfect world and the tires and wheels are not perfect in runout(round) and will never be perfectly balanced by the local tech at the shop. So unless you have access to the equipment that Ican is talking about, the dynabeads will provide a smoother ride. I use them and they work from a real life standpoint without going into the physical theory as to why they work. And I will not talk about the near impossibility to perfectly balance a wheel at all speeds because of dynamic changes to the wheel as the speed changes.

So Ican is right in his perfect world with the ability to perform the tests he is talking about. In the real world I live in I use dynabeads and like the smoother ride. My tires/wheels were so bad on my new UC that I left the weights on and just added the dynabeads.

Cheers to Ican and I do not dispute his comments, I just don't live in that world and don't have access to that equipment. In addition, I don't want to recheck my tire balance every 100 miles because road wear causes the runout and balance to continually change. On motorcycles wobble usually comes from head bearings and/or uneven tire wear from running incorrect tire pressure, not from being out of balance. Balance can have an effect, but it is not usually the primary cause.

So I enjoy my beads and I like the vibration free ride and it is good to not have numb hands. Your choice do what you want.

 

Dyna beads says to run them on motorcycles w/o weights. Use them on my flht & rigid, both ride smooth and no ugly weights on hi-dollar rims.

 

My last tire change I put on Michelans and threw in some dyna beads. 13,000 miles later and I need a new back tire. The ride has been smooth and vibration free the whole time and the tires show even wear all over, no cupping or bald spots. I just picked up some E3's and some more dyna beads. All in all I'm very happy with them. You can also check out dyna beads on youtube.

 

This is from MCN;

" MCN evaluated the Dyna Beads on a reader's suggestion back in October of 2006. Although the tiny white ceramic beads have apparently found favor with long-haul truckers, we tested them in a Honda 599. Using a shop's spin balancer, we checked the bike's rear wheel, which had 1.6 oz. of balance weights in place. The balancer agreed with the amount and location of the weights. After installing the specified two ounces of beads in the rear tire and then removing the rim weights, the balancer found an out of balance condition. This test was repeated five times and the balancer continued to call for the replacement of the 1.6 oz. of rim weights in the same location. Over-the-road testing was next. Without the rim weights, the rear wheel produced noticeable vibration and the installation of the beads gave a barely perceptible improvement. Also, the weight of the beads added so close to the tire tread gave a noticeable increase in gyro stability, making the steering heavier. We also tried them on a car and were disappointed. Bottom line: Save your money for a proper spin balance."

 

Street tires , not racing tires

 

You are absolutely correct that it still showed the tire needed weight on the spin balancer because it doesnt spin fast enough to distribute the beads and create centrifical balancing.

 

I've tried Dyna Beads and I haven't had any luck with them. When I called their customer service, they said that they were causing "harmonic vibration". They said something like a poorly adjusted belt or something would start as a small shake then become a big shake at the weakest point, the front tire. Everything is good until I hit 75 MPH exactly. I've adjusted my belt and checked my spokes to no avail. I think I'm going back to lead weights. Do you think I could have the tires balanced with the Dyna Beads still inside? I'm no physics major...