Balancing sand for smooth running wheels - goodbye lead weights!
Have you ever been annoyed that a lot of lead weights were stuck to the beautiful rims of your classic car to balance the wheel? The lead weights are certainly not pretty to look at.
But they don't seem to be necessary, because wheel imbalance can also be eliminated with so-called "balancing sand". When mounting the tire, a quantity of balancing sand calculated according to the wheel size must be poured into the tire. The sand is distributed in the tire due to the centrifugal force and collects exactly opposite the imbalance after a short drive, thus compensating for it.
One can only speculate as to why tire specialists do not offer this technology aggressively, but prefer to stick on lead weights.
The desert is a symbolic image, the balancing sand is produced specifically for its purpose.
Some readers suspected that our blog article about "balancing sand" was a joke on April 1st. We deliberately published the article on April 1 because we hoped that no one would be aware of this type of balancing and that we might lead you on the wrong track. We wanted to divert attention away from our " Anvils" article , because it was actually made up. The balancing sand used to have the disadvantage that it followed the force of gravity and fell down in the tire every time the vehicle stopped. When driving on, it took a few meters for the sand to return to the desired position in the tire. The balancing sand was further developed into balancing beads, which actually still exist. The company Counterparts is one of the suppliers of these small plastic bags filled with balancing beads. The bag is simply placed in the tire during assembly. The first revolutions of the wheel tear the bag, the electrostatic beads are distributed inside the tire and settle against the wheel imbalance. We have not tested this method, but will report back when we know more about it. If our readers have any experience with balancing sand or balancing beads, we would be pleased to receive your comments .
