Has there been any significant changes to the composition of wheel weights since say the 80's or 90's ? I have a pile of weights picked up in the last 10 or so years and planning to start melting them down an maybe casting some new bullets. I don't remember reading about any changes,but might have missed something along the way.Thanks.

I found it has about 2-3% antimony. I melt in linotype and calc. using 2%. And of course tin either in ingots or 50/50 bar solder.

There is a fantastic casting calc. on cast boolits website. I get BHN of around 14 using 2% as a baseline in wheelwieghts.

Last melt, I made up about 200lbs of Lyman #2, with 70% WW, 10% 40/60 Tin/Solder Bar, and 20% of Linotype.

I guess too many of our little kiddies were picking up lost wheel weights off the streets then eating them and getting lead poisoning, so our wonderful Federal Government banned the use of lead in wheel weights. Wheel weights manufactured now are made from zinc or iron.

Not everywhere. Just CA, and few others. I still get WW from tire shops that are lead based. I am starting to see more and more zinc and iron, but only about 10% of what I get.

http://leadfreewheels.org/

I would say in the near future, it will be banned.

BC- I was just going on what I was told by the two tire shops (in Montana) where I had been buying wheel weights. They said they could no longer buy and install lead weights.

Interesting link that you posted. If there are as many lost wheel weights on the roads that was posted, and the danger from their lead is as bad as they claim, then ALL of our creeks and rivers would be devoid of fish, insect larvae, and other marine life.

The report showed pics of ww's picked up from roads. The ww's were dented from being run over by vehicles, and the report said that this would cause lead dust which would be washed into creeks, and kill marine life. That is almost a physical impossibility. Lead is soft and malleable, so it is easily dented by being pushed into the pavement when run over by tires, but it is not ground into dust. The tires also kick the ww's off the driving surface where they are no longer driven over and will just lie there forever. If the numbers given in that report were true, our roads would be literally lined with lost wheel weights.

Lead is an inert metal. It is found naturally in the environment, and it will not naturally break down, nor is it water soluble.

I am obviously looking for lost ww's in the wrong places. The report claimed that streets in Albuquerque have 40 pounds of lost ww's deposited per mile every year. WOW!!!

My girlfriend lives in a suburb of Denver. She likes to walk, and she walks one to two hours every day, mostly along the roads west of Denver. She picks up any ww's that she sees. Every Christmas, I get a little box with maybe one pound of ww's that she has found the previous year. When I visit her, I'll walk with her. On a very good day, we might find a half dozen ww's from two miles of West Colfax Avenue, one of the busiest roads in the Denver area.

Wheel weights are just another victim of the enviro-wackos war on the way that we live.