Altered wheel weight composition?

[Ds J]

Does anyone know whether the new wheel weights (flat, rectangular stick-on) type have an altered chemical composition?

I heard this morning that folks have not succeeded melting them like the old wheel weights.

[oafpatroll]

Lead is being phased out of wheel weights internationally so a lot of whet you'll find here now are zinc or even steel. Zinc is a bitch if it gets into a lead melt as relatively little of the stuff messes up a lot of lead. I'm not aware of any easy way to get it out of a lead melt either so I've binned a fair bit of contaminated lead over the years. Getting hold of wheel weight scrap is harder and harder nowadays though as it seems to be collected from the fitment places on a contract basis for the most part. My local tyre place used to give me theirs in 20l buckets for a case of beer a couple of times a year but now I buy range scrap.     

[Mohamed]

I got a box of wheel weights from a fitment center some type back. Went through the lot which took some time, hardly any lead weights in it. All zinc based. Stopped asking them for more.

[223]

The wheel weights are often marked to identify the material (and weight):
Steel = Fe
Zinc = Zn or Zk
Lead = Pb

[Treeman]

The stick on weights are all alloys and lead substitutes, in short useless. You only want the metal clip on type of weights.

[oafpatroll]

The stick on weights are all alloys and lead substitutes, in short useless. You only want the metal clip on type of weights.

Sadly those are not 100% guaranteed to be lead either anymore.

[big5ifty]

It's easy to separate the lead from the zinc and steel.

Use a wire cutter, close the jaws on the item. If its lead, it'll be soft and the cutter jaw will sink into it.

It it's zinc or steel, it won't.

The last time I bought wheelweights by the bucket nearly half of them were not lead.