New innovative product or snake oil...

[Jr ///M5]

When having the tires installed yesterday at the shop, one of the techs was showing me a new kind of balancing system. It was a tube filled with small bb like media, only it wasn't filled all the way and you could shake it around inside the tube.

The idea is that as you're driving, the media rolls around and finds the imbalance and corrects it. I've never heard of this before but the tech assured me that it works great especially on 4x4's and RV's. After explaining to him how sensitive the suspension, balance and tire pressures on BMWs are, he decided that we should maybe stay with the stick on lead weights.

Has anybody heard of or used this type of system? It is supposed to correct imbalanced tires for much longer than the conventional stick on weights. Now my curiosity is peaked.

Here's the website....http://imiproducts.com/xact/index.aspx

[Fetch]

Yeah, I haven't seen that exact method though. The method I've seen is very common for big offroading/mud tires, usually only over 35" though. People with big offroading tires that are almost impossible to balance will pour a few thousand (something like that) airsoft pellets into the tire. Under 35mph they just kinda roll around and don't do anything, but above that, they distribute around the tire to balance it better than wheel weights could do.

I wouldn't use it in my bmw, unless these ones that you point out work better than the method I have seen for Jeeps/other 4x4s.
edit: The reason I wouldn't use it, is that it still looks like that you need to have some speed before the media will be able to find the right spot, as with the pellets I've seen. But maybe a slightly off-balance tire at 30mph doesn't matter when it's perfect at higher speeds?...that would make sense I guess

[ThoreauHD]

Looks like a childrens toy.. They have something that's like this. Spinning bean bag pellets on a wheel.

It should work according to centripedal force. Would be nice for wheels prone to being out of balance, to have this on the inside of their columns. Hollowed out at 6 points or even 3 points would do the job invisibly and silently.

[gale]

I remember those when I was a kid back in the 50's. They had them at the original Pep Boys in east L.A. when my Dad would take his '49 straight-8 Buick in for new Coronet tires. The only "balancer" that tire shops had in those days was a static bubble balancer. Dynamic spin balancers were just coming out but hadn't become wide spread yet at that time.

I'm not going to say the tube/bb's product is "snake oil". They do have some physics credibility, but if they had any merit, they would have been a hit back then, which they weren't.

[Zeuk in Oz]

I would be a little suspicious of any product that uses the danger of lead in lead weights to workers as a first justification.

[winfred]

the long haul drivers on the diesel board rave about these http://www.centramatic.com/ that are bb style and these http://www.balancemasters.ca/home.htm that are fluid style, big offroad tired guys run a powder in the tires that does about the same thing

[sKilled]

...but if they had any merit, they would have been a hit back then, which they weren't.

But VHS beat Beta, even though it was nowhere near as good. And Telecom NZ praises the merits of CDMA as the bees knees, even though it's a dated technology like horse drawn carriages. Just because it's not popular, doesn't mean it aint good.

[CharlesAFerg]

...wtf???