When u get a road force balance GET A PRINTOUT OF THE RESULTS! Its the inly way to see if they took the time to do it right. Must be under 25 lbs or youll feel it. Most place will say their printer doesnt work so ask to photograph the screen for “your records”. Thats what I do and They let me

 

I work for a tyre manufacturer and tyres can get out of round before fitting if they are stored incorrectly in the shop. If they are stored in their side and not flat then they start to get a flat spot. The tyre can also get a flat spot if the car is left to sit for a while as well. The tyre shops you took it too should have easily spotted this problem and it's a dead give away when you have vibration like you have experienced.

 

What is your opinion of those odd wear marks on my tires? I was cleaning my other rims this weekend and found every other tire has the same wear showing on 2 blocks (where only an individual block has the grooves missing). But I didn't have horrible vibration except from this one tire. Unfortunately I only brought the one suspect wheel to the specialist, he didn't check all 4 wheels. But the one he did show me you could visibly see running out of round on his balance machine.

 

im not an expert but those marks dont look like anything ive seen that suggests an improper balance or alignment. Looks like the tiretread mold is mussing a line for the groove there. My opinion.

 

I'm thinking you're right about that... I can stick a paperclip about 1/4" deep into those little grooves. If the groove wore away due to being out of round, that one individual spot would have to be sticking out like a grape.

So those marks may mean nothing, even though the rim guy pointed out those spots as indications of abnormal wear. I'll see how those groove lines look on the brand new tires when they get installed.

 

I can see from the pictures that those blocks have not grooves at all. If they did have grooves then you would see some evidence of them even if the rubber was worn in that area. If that small area had worn the groove completely off the rubber then you would see the grooves surrounding it with some wear. It looks like that block is missing the groove during the manufacturing process. I would say the mould for use in the press is missing that part of the pattern. It looks like they have a faulty mould. Tyres are normally put into a large press and the it normally takes a number of mould plates put into a circle in the press that is then pressed into the rubber tyre to make the tread. I think those blocks that are missing part of the pattern are not related to your problem.

I can however see in the lower part of picture one that the tyre has worn unevenly, the tread in the lower part of the picture has clearly worn more than the other areas of the tyre. That suggest the tyre is out of round. You normally see this kind of wear where the tyre is out of shape or has developed a flat spot. Flat spots occur through skids or a wheel locking up or dragging.

It's quite unusual to get a tyre out of round from the factory unless it's a cheap manufacturer or some poorly remoulded tyres. The company I work for put our tyres through many tests before the tyre gets anywhere near the end of line process. Our test machinery will detect out of round tyres, air bubbles, pattern defects and tread quality issues etc.

 

I would have thought it was rare too until my brand new set of pirellis on my brand new car wouldnt balance!

 

I see what you mean here.

 

Yeah I've had a set of pirelli's before and they were terrible and didn't last long at all. The best I had for this car was the Kumho's They were superb, comfortable and quite, even at high speed.

 

OMG, I thought I was done with this saga, but they actually managed to make my vibration worse. Got the 2 new tires installed on the front yesterday. Only drove it <50 mph in town so couldn't tell too much about the smoothness. Today took it out on the highway and it was horrific. Drove about 50 miles on varying types of road, and the steering wheel is shaking visibly. Before it was just a minor annoyance you could feel in the wheel.

Going to do a visual inspection tomorrow and spin the tires by hand. I don't want to just take it back to the tire shop, I am convinced they do not know what they're doing. I think my best bet is to call the rim shop and see if they can do a balance (I assume they can), let them look at both new tires and figure out if it's by some chance a defective tire out the door, just a terrible balance job,or if there's some rim issue they didn't find the first time.

 

Michelin"s ???????
Have had great luck with them myself.
If not, which brand did you put on the front????
Take them back, what ever brand they are.
That's my advise, for what it's worth.

 

Same Pirellis. I didn't go with a full new set, they warrantied the out of round Pirelli and I bought one more to match.

 

Well sometimes you have to just cut your losses & start over.
Sad but true, keep on these people to make it right.
Pay the difference, & upgrade to a better tire.
Or is this the ONLY brand they sell?

 

Thing is, if I called and said "the vibration is worse than before" they'd certainly say "bring it back over, we'll re-balance them" as they've been doing with me for the last 10 years. I think I've just reached my limit of how many time I'll let them re-balance and still end up with marginal results. Foolishly, I did not get a readout of the road force balance as Aracuda mentioned... the shop was really busy when I went, and you had to wait outside, etc, due to current social distancing requirements. I waited almost 2 hours and just wanted to get out of there.

The shop sells most every brand, but because it was a warranty replacement I could only get the same tire for the defective one. And since I wanted matching tires on the axle I purchased a tire to make it a set of 2. Yeah I may have to end up buying a set of tires if this ends up being a farse with tires that are never round. I just find it hard to believe since Pirelli are sold on new cars, that more people don't have issues with them. I thought I'd have a smooth ride until they got a few thousand miles on them at least.

I did take a look under the car tonight. Spun the tires by hand. Both appear to have some kind of weird flat spot. I checked from multiple angles, I can't tell exactly what it is. When I left the tire shop they had the pressures jacked up to 40 psi. I reduced them to 32psi cold the day I went on the highway trip, the vibration was awful. Stopped and added 4psi more to the fronts which did reduce the horrible vibration, but it's still bad. That is probably why I didn't notice how bad they were as soon as I left the shop. I don't know if that indicates anything, or just masking the symptom.

I also noticed one tire has no inboard balance weight. I know that's not definitive, but in most of my experience if you have an outboard balance weight, there's almost always some weight inboard 180 degrees away. Did the clipped on weight fall off? Maybe he never put one on.

 

Take the best of the two new front tires for a new spare.
See what they will do about the other tire, then ask about a deal, for all your trouble, on four new tires.

 

I feel your pain haha. I even made my own thread about it here. Every time I get a balance done they say its smooth as glass, and then I ride it and its crap....still vibration and shimmy. This is even on two sets of rims/tires. I am slowly going to start replacing every rubber component that can cause a vibration and also get the wheels RF balanced at different shops until I am content.. I will win!!

 

Yes, read your thread the other day. Extremely frustrating situation--end up feeling like you're a PIA to the tire places or get told you're "over sensitive" when the damn car is vibrating off the side of the road. The only upside to my scenario is that I know 8 weeks ago the car had no vibration in the steering wheel. Tires were rotated, vibration showed up. Found 1 bad tire. Thought that getting 2 new tires up front would solve it once and for all, but it would be my luck that it got worse. Will post back when I find out more!

 

If you jack up the car until the wheel is just off the ground and rotate the wheel and you can see the rubber scrape the ground or the gap becomes larger as you turn the wheel then you have a tyre with a flat spot or it's out of round. I can't believe that you have got another tyre in that state. You are correct, an out of round tyre will 'bounce'/'vibrate' less if the pressure is high enough to push out shape of the tyre. So you tend to see worse vibration the lower the PSI.

 

Another simple thing you can test. With the wheel off the ground, and as you fully rotate the wheel, measure the gap between the ground and the outside of edge of the wheel rim. Does it increase and decrease a lot? If it does not change significantly then your wheel rim is ok.

 

Yes, this is basically what I did. Jacked the front of the car up until there was just 1/2 inch between the tire and the garage floor. Had a helper rotate the wheel while I watched the gap. It looked like the tire was hopping. Also focused on the edge of the rim, that looks like it is running true.

Have an appointment today with the original shop--I want them to look at the tires and see if they observe the same flat spot. If so, I'm done with these tires. Will go back to Conti or Michelin. Date code on these 2 new ones is 0719. If they've been sitting since February 19 maybe that's the issue. I will post back this afternoon.