quote:

Originally posted by sourdough44:
What about the tires themselves? I mean age, make, amount of wear?

Bought a used Tundra years ago, right away the ride was questionable. It came with larger tires, 3/4 or so worn. Some new Michelin tires took care of most of the issues.

We can ‘assume’ your wheels themselves are ok? The ride was good before rotation?

Yes, I noticed nothing prior to the initial rotation. < 1 year on these Cooper Discoverer ST-MAXX tires, so they are well in the green on tread.

I have no suspension modifications as of yet. I'll try rotating them again if I don't find anything else obviously wrong with them. I'll inspect the struts, too.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: flesheatingvirus,

Are your tires directional?

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
I'll inspect the struts, too.

Just give the truck a shove by the front fender.

If it moves any, they're bad.

Tires are not directional. No abnormal movement noticed on the struts and no mud chunks. All were at 35 +/- 1psi. The wear on both looks just like this one. It is very even across the tread.



I just had it up on jackstands. The bearings have zero slop. I didn't notice anything in the suspension. I DID notice this difference between the front wheels:




Notice the one above with all of the extra weights is missing those flat, square factory weights? Is it normal to take those off as needed? I thought those were on there from the factory.

The stick on weights on inside of rim are just an alternate method of adding weights.

If you have long strips of wheel weights, the tire is mounted wrong. Look for the yellow circle on your tire) it indicates the lightest part of the tire). It should be aligned with the valve stem

If you took a tire depth gauge to the front and rear of those outside blocks, you will find wear, they look feathered to me. That would be your noise.
Weights are used on the outside and inside of the rim. That particular rim wouldn't take kindly to trying to drive weights on the outside edge, so they use adhesive weights on the inside of the outside edge.
The adhesive weights are a pain when the rim is dirty, takes some time to clean everything up.
Can go around discussing it but either put them back or road force the fronts and put struts in it. But this is a gun forum and nobody knows nothing about auto repair .

When I rotate my tires, I use a tire gauge and measure the tread depth four places across and at least three places around the tire. That way I can see if there is even wear and I record it in my maintenance book.

The last set of Michelin's got 117K miles.

Sorry, but those tires themselves look a little questionable. Before chasing with a bunch of $$, I’d get better tires.

This wheel was on the rear and is now on the front? There is nearly half a pound of weights on the inside, and I don't see any stick-on weights on the outside, just the remnant or residue of the adhesive. If this wheel were to be put on the balancer and spun before removing the weights - something I often did when diagnosing problems like this - I'll bet it would show considerable out-of-balance.

^^^That's a crap load of weights

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
^^^That's a crap load of weights

Absolutely a crap ton of weight to try to balance that wheel/tire combo. There is definitely an issue with that.

I don't know what kind of balancers Discount uses, but today's quality wheel Road Force Balancer will detect any out of round wheel, improper mounting on the wheel balancer itself, or wheel/tire positioning (heavy areas of both wheel and tire not being offset from each other). There is a possibility that the tire itself has internal damage that you can't see such as a belt separating inside the construction of the tire.

Some of these issues can be masked when the wheel is mounted on the rear of the vehicle, but become obvious then mounted in the front.Also as some here have stated, suspension wear needs looked into as well, but that amount of weight on the inside of that wheel needs to be explained.

Rotate the tires back to the location where they performed satisfactorily.

This one is a little better, but still not very good. There appears to be 2½-3 oz. on the inside, 3 oz. on the outside (each segment of the stick-ons is ¼ oz.), a total of ~6 oz. This much usually indicates an out-of-round (up-and-down motion) or runout (side-to-side wobble) condition in the tire or wheel.

Both of those are the front tires. I’m going to inquire about the road force balancer. If they can’t do it, I’ll look elsewhere.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Rotate the tires back to the location where they performed satisfactorily.

Obviously I can do his, but I’d rather fix the problem areas of hiding it.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
Both of those are the front tires. I’m going to inquire about the road force balancer. If they can’t do it, I’ll look elsewhere.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Rotate the tires back to the location where they performed satisfactorily.

Obviously I can do his, but I’d rather fix the problem areas of hiding it.

Understood. Unfortunately, you likely have a bad tire that isn't going to give acceptable performance on the front of the truck. Also, if you rotate them to the original location and the problem persists, you know something changed besides tire location.

In the interest of thoroughness, take a wire wheel in a drill and clean up the corrosion on areas around the lug holes and the inside of the center hole. And as much as possible on the hub and brake rotor (you won't be able to get all of that). Then you'll have clean & flat surfaces.

Think this has been eliminated as a problem, but did you spin the tire while mounted on the vehicle and up on a jack stand?

Any rumble would indicate bad wheel bearings. I had the “shimmy and noise” you describe on my ‘95 Dodge Ram somewhere around 100k miles.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris42:
Think this has been eliminated as a problem, but did you spin the tire while mounted on the vehicle and up on a jack stand?

Any rumble would indicate bad wheel bearings. I had the “shimmy and noise” you describe on my ‘95 Dodge Ram somewhere around 100k miles.

Yep. I also give it a good shake holding that top and bottom of the tire. No movment.

I’ll also clean up the mounting surfaces; good idea.

I just got done with Discount Tire. They put them on their road force balancer.

Apparently, this is all my fault. They are cupped as hell. I seriously slacked off on rotating them. Whoops! Their entire machine was shaking quite a bit when one of them was spinning up.

They recommended driving on them with reduced tire pressure for a while; that's about all I can do to slightly reduce the cupping at this point. I'm going to be extremely anal about rotations with the next set.

Note to self: Don't put off tire rotation. Every 5k from now on. No exceptions.