Am I missing something here? I couldnt really find any opinions about the beads on the forum. I figured it would be nice not to have to mare the shit out of my rims from frequent tire changes and subsiquent rebalancing with weights. The beads are working great so I thought is was worth posting but it seams like people have a hard on about the topic. Have there been alot of bad reports that I'm not aware of.
First, we are smartasses by nature. Don't take it personal. Secondly, we are skeptics. Third, it is a hard concept to wrap my little mind around. You know, centrifugall forces and all them other physics things. I really would like a common language explanation of how this works. I'm all for not galling the hell out of the rims.
OK guys and gals, hold on to your underwear...............
I found an explanation from a guy on a BMW auto website from a couple of years ago, and I think he got it from a manufactures site himself, so here it goes....
"The physics of how/why the free mass inside the tire automatically knows where to go is hard to conceptualize. The best way to understand why this works is to exaggerate the problem.
Imagine there is a 5 lb weight fixed to one place on the tire. When you spin that tire to normal highway speeds, it will be so terribly out of balance that the tire would probably hop off the ground with every rotation. The axis of rotation is actually moved away from the center of the wheel toward this extra mass because it’s pulling the whole tire with it as it spins. The free moving balancing weights inside the tire are not affected the same way by these forces. First as you get up to speed, centripetal force will make the balancing weight stick to the inside of the tire. Then the force of the unbalanced weight on the tire will move this balancing weight away from the imbalance. When enough of the mass is opposite of the imbalance, the vibration disappears and the axis that the tire is rotating on returns back to the center.
To give you another example to explain why the balancing weight moves away from the imbalance and balances the system, think about what happens when you accelerate fast in a car. Anything that’s loose moves to the back of the vehicle. This same force is created on an unbalanced spinning tire. The imbalance is jerking the tire sending the free mass inside away from it and the centripetal force holds it here."
This seems to make sense :dribble:
Hope this helps.....
Matt
