Wheel Weights?

[David Bachelder]

I stopped at several tire shops looking for wheel weights. No dice. They turn them back in to the company they buy the weights from and get credit.

Good for the recycler.
Good for the environment.
Bad for the bullet caster.

No one will give me the weights, they won't even sell them to me. Good thing I have a very large supply of plumbers lead or I'd be lead poor.

 

[mikld]

Yep, wheel weights are extremely difficult to find in most areas today thanks to the "greenies"/treehuggers. They have way too many people convinced that lead is as bad as uranium isotopes. Luckily, I worked in a major vehicle repair for a large city water department, and got wheel weights free for a lot of years and stockpiled some. It's been mebbe 5 or 6 years since I had seen any wheel weighs in So. CA, but I moved to Oregun and still find some occationally...

 

[GP100man]

My last bucket of WW had alot of zinc & steel weights It took 3 buckets to get 1 full 1

If there free I`ll take the time to sort em ,but to pay for em & a 1/3 of em unuseable no way .

I`d hit Rotometals up first

Do not melt the zinc 1s into your alloy ,it will cause melt problems & the alloy will never fill out the mould rite !!!

 

[hornady]

Sad fact but sources are drying up, this was my main reason to build the bullet trap. I live in the northeast, bad roads and lots of snow so lots of tire shops. The one suggestion forget the big shops, most will not sell you weights, but the little guys are still willing to give or sell very cheap. I still have two shops that will, the one free the other last time I think it was 18 cents a pound, but as said there is a lot of waste in a bucket of lead tire weights.

 

[Lee McNelly]

Poss scource

SCRAPE YARD

 

[GroovyMike]

yep!

The last couple posters have it exactly right. Chain stores will not sell to you. But if you build a friendship with a local garage they will take care of you. I get wheel weights for free from the garage that does all my auto repairs. This is great BUT the lead in teh wheel weight bucket is getting less and less thanks to the nanny state outlawing the use of lead wheel weights. My local salvage yard will sell me lead at 75 cents per pound. Good to know if I can't get it elsewhere. I just connected with a local plumber to buy 100 pounds of soft lead pipe at 50 cents per pound (and a few cast bullets for him). That should keep me in 9mm and muzzle loader balls for awhile but I think I am going to have to actually start buying shotgun shells instead of loading my own. The price of lead shot no longer makes it cheaper to load shotgun shells vs. buying them by the case.

I will be building a bullet trap for my back yard shooting range very soon.

 

[m&p45acp10+1]

You are going to the wrong ones. Go the ghetto tire stores that sell a lot of used tires. They usualy have a bunch of them that they will sell pretty cheap.

 

[grandpajoe]

There are a bunch of folks that sell processed lead (smelted and cleaned) for around a buck a pound (which is what pure lead is selling for now .98 last week) on this site http://castboolits.gunloads.com/
I don't have any affiliation with them other than a member of the forum, but there is a lot of good info and people. Also as others have already said try the smaller local shops you'll find some. It might help if you give them your business and maybe some doughnuts.

 

[Mike1234]

Try the small mom-'n-pop shops... or as was previously posted, the "ghetto" shops.

 

[FrankenMauser]

Some parts of the country still see a lot of reports of good WW hunting. But... if you're close to any big city, the gettin' is gone.

I have the same problem in my area. The primary reasons for shops (even shops where I know the employees or owners) to reject me are:
1. "We have to turn the take-offs in for new WWs. Under the contract, we can't sell any."
2. "Lead is a poison. We won't well it."
3. "Bubba Joe makes fishing sinkers out of them. You two will have to wrassle."
4. "We have a guy paying $6.3 million per lb. You'll have to beat that, if you want them."

It's not a huge loss, I guess. The WWs around here are about 30% steel and 30% zinc. So the 40% that's still lead is almost a waste of time.

I'll be hitting a local metal recycler next week. I can get known lead alloys in large quantities for the same price, or less than these shops want for WWs that are of questionable or unknown composition.

 

[TXGunNut]

I'll be hitting a local metal recycler next week. I can get known lead alloys in large quantities for the same price, or less than these shops want for WWs that are of questionable or unknown composition. -FrankenMauser

Good idea. Making the rounds of uncooperative tire shops is rapidly becoming a waste of precious fuel. At the recycler we can also sell aluminum, junk brass, used primers and any other scrap we have lying around.

 

[m&p45acp10+1]

I tend to get the most wheel weights in the summer. I show up with a 5 gal bucket of iced down Bud Light, and a few dollars in cash at a few minutes before they close.

Hardly anyone will turn down an iced down 12 pack of beer, and some cash for a bucket of scrapped wheel weights.

 

[salvadore]

I recently scored 2 five gallon buckets of wheel weights in Billings for free. There are some stick on steel weights in the mix, not much and I picked up one of the clamp on type that looked like a regular ww, but was able to bend it without too much trouble. Do they make mostly lead ww? Finally, how much does a 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights weigh?

 

[TXGunNut]

A 5-gallon bucket weighs 100#, sometimes more. If they work on newer cars with OE steel ww's it'll be lighter. If you can bend it easily it's probably not steel, likely not much tin in it either. Steel is generally marked "Fe" and zinc is marked "Zn".