I had been noticing that one of the back tires on my Jetta seemed like it was making a little noise for a few weeks. I finally got around to rotating them to the front this weekend and now I can hear the bastard loud and clear. (Damn dopplar effect.) I can feel it shaking the wheel/pedals at low speeds too.
When I run my hand along the tread I can feel ripples along the inner/center strip of tread. I’ve got some ideas but what was this from?
Where is a good and reasonably priced place to go for a new tire and to get my alignment checked? Maybe I should just suck it up for a month and then get snows, then deal with it in the spring.
The tire was a General Exclaim 205/55 R16 if anybody cares.
Nevermind, after a little reading/learning I’m pretty sure the “cupping” as I’ve found it’s generally known as has just been a product of my own negligence and ignorance.
I’ll admit my mistakes so that others can be reminded of the value of proper maintenance. :tup:
I didn’t bother rotating the tires for the first 17k miles I’ve had the car, which that alone is asking for problems. I also inflated the tires based on what was on the side of the tire rather than finding out what’s recommended for my car. (Max 44 psi on the tire, so I inflated them to 40. After a quick search on the Vortex I found that my tire pressures are listed on my fuel door: 30 front and 28 rear.)
Hence the cupping. The LR tire in particular must have cupped because I have been neglecting bad brakes in the rear, and that corner in particular is bad. (There’s only about a 3/4" strip of the disc still properly contacting the pad.)
So hopefully the cupping will work its way out now that it’s on the front and in the mean time I’ll force myself to cough up for new pads/rotors/sliders.
So lesson learned. Tires should be inflated per vehicle specs, not tire specs. Also, don’t neglect proper maintenance/repair as it’ll snowball into other problems.
And unfortunately, placing cupped tires on a different axle will not help bring them back to normal roundness. Once a tire is cupped, it will continue to cup in the same fashion. Even if the vehicle is aligned, the wear will be better, but will continue to cup slowly but surely. And putting a cupped tire on the front is going to drive you nuts…shaking in the steering wheel is going to feel like a mis balanced tire all day long…
Conclusions:
You need 1 or 2 new tires to avoid insanity from shaking
You need an alignment
Rotate tires every 5-6,000 miles
Keep inflation based on the panel on your driver’s door sill…thats the manufacturers specs
I’ll have to put up with it for a little while. Closing on a house next week has cash a bit tight right now. When things do loosen up however, where do I go to come see you for all of the above?
