Dyna Beads Trials

It's been pretty damned cold around here.  A foot of snow fell the other night and I almost froze my ass off riding the 20 miles to work at 5am.  I don't mind the cold so much, but it's the ice on the roadways that give me the real chills.  It's going to be a challenge to get through this winter.  Thankfully I'm in the process of rebuilding a 94 XLT Polaris to keep me happy when I can't ride the glide. 

Enough whining...So,  Doug on "40 Years on Two Wheels" had a post a long time ago regarding these things called "Dyna Beads".  I have been aching to try these things out, but for some reason or other never got around to it until...just now bitches!

Here is the gist of the D-Beads:  Dyna Beads are tiny ceramic beads that are placed into your tires via the valve stem.  They are designed to replace the ugly ass pinch weights used to balance your tire.  As the tire starts to spin, the centrifugal force causes the beads to evenly distribute around the tire.  Heavy spots in the tire, that would cause an in-balance, cause the beads to gravitate to that spot until the tire is perfectly balanced.  Check out this spiff for a visual of my blathering:  "How D-Beads Work"

In my quest to attain 100% wrenching capabilities, I decided that I would save some road dime by changing my tires on my own.  Was it easy...hell no!  Not at first anyway.  Once you figure a few tricks out, it's pretty straight forward.  I'll go through the process in a later post.  (I'll also give you a huge pointer that will help keep you from dumping your bike afterwards....like I did.  heh, that will come in a later post also...but I think you'll get a good chuckle out of it.)

Once I had the tires mounted, and the tire beads seated with the correct tires pressure, I removed the valve stem.  The Dyna Beads are poured from a small bottle that has a vinyl tubing.  You attach the tubing to the valve stem, then pour the beads from the bottle into the tube. This is a time consuming process.  I found that taking a screwdriver handle and tapping the valve stem gently, kinda' in a rapid jerk-off motion, really helped the beads move along.  For my tires they recommended 2 ounces.  It cost me less than ten bucks for the whole setup. 

Now for the results after running a couple of weeks on D-Beads; F'in outstanding!!!  My bike has never rode this smooth.  The ride is glass smooth...I'm not even shitting here.  GLASS SMOOTH.  It is recommended that you fill your tires with nitrogen, but not required.  I guess there is a change of the beads possibly sticking together in freezing weather.  Nitrogen also is suppose to keep constant psi because it will not expand or contract due to altitude and/or temperature changes.  I didn't use the nitrogen and have been riding in 32 degree weather for a week or so.  I have experienced no problems with the dyna beads as of yet.

The D-Beads are ROCK STARS in my book.  Seriously.  I'll never use anything else as far as I can tell at this point.  I can have my tires shipped to my doorstep with some dynabeads and change my rubber my own damned self!  Hell yeah!  Save money.  No ugly ass weights on my sweet ass rims.  Easier cleaning because now I don't have to work around that lead.  I don't have to worry about the weights falling off on a run...like they have so many times before, which equates to downtime and expense in the shop.  The tires will always wear evenly and always will be in perfect balance.

Now...they claim you can get up to 80% better tire wear and mileage?  Oh, someone hand me a smash rag!  Whoooooooooooooooo!  Ok...I'm testing that now.  We will get to the bottom of this one too.  I recorded the mileage on the odometer.  I can squeeze 10k from a rear, and almost 20k from a front stock Dunlop 402.  Let's see if the D-Beads will deliver on this claim....I'll let you know in 10k...possibly much later than that.