Tire noise

[Troy]

Before I continue, please keep in mind I am in no way a motor head, mechanically in the know or anything like that.

I had my tire's rotated, had a balance and alignment today at TyrePower (I'm sure you non-Aussies will know what kind of company this is) and now with the tire's from the back now on the front (which look practically brand new) and now there is a lot of noise and some vibration when accelerating, braking and turning corners at certain speeds.

Is this really just noise from the fully tread tires, or is it something else causing the noise and vibration?

[petrified.rabbit]

here is why is I dont rotate tires front to rear (unless you do it really really often, like weekly).

In the front the tires wear rounded, because the turn. This means the edges wear as fast as the center.

In the rear, the tires wear flat across the tread. Eventually leaving the edge of the tire "pointed"

If you put a tire from the back that is worn to the back and turn, you will ride up onto the edge of the tire.
you feel double the impact of this when you have front wheel drive.
Instead of wearing evenly like a new set of tires, you will just cup and feather the edge, increasing the wear.

I am not saying don't rotate your tires, but putting the tires back to their original positions will cure your problem.

[Troy]

Thanks for that. Gonna get 2 new tires to replace the ones losing the tread.

Once I get the new tires should I put the ones now on the front, back to the back?

[petrified.rabbit]

were the tires worn? you could just easily rotate them back and eliminate the problem.

[Troy]

If you take a close look at the picture of my car, should be able to see how much tread it's lost.

If I do rotate them back, will it mess up the alignment and balance I had done?

EDIT: Ignore the close up shot of the the tires. That shot was taken when I got the wheels first put on.

Tomorrow I'll take a close up shot of the tires that have lost tread and post for your opinion

[Troy]

See if you can get a close up look

[petrified.rabbit]

there is quite a bit of debate amongst my friends about that as well, but here are some answers.

If the tires are spin balanced, they are spin balanced individually.
SO each tire should act balanced regardless of position on the car.

If the wheels are the same size and offset, the alignment aligns the wheels to each other, with the assumption the tire is square to the rim.

So unless you have terrible terrible camber wear or something else that inhibits the tire from sitting flat when the wheel is "aligned" to the ground. You can re-rotate the tires without adverse affects. But in this case, you would be eliminating the adverse effects be rotating them back.

[Thymeclock]

were the tires worn? you could just easily rotate them back and eliminate the problem.

If it doesn't eliminate the problem, it would indicate that they didn't do the balancing and/or alignment correctly. IMHO, that's very likely the case. Vibration is often caused by an imbalanced tire or a defect in the rim. It will be far more noticeable if the wheel is located on the front of the car, due to steering, whereas it might not be noticeable if the same wheel is in the rear.

I always rotate my tires from front to rear and have never encountered any problem from doing so. Tire noise is usually caused by the design of the tire itself. Some tires are inherently noisy. The tires that came with my car since new were (are) noisy, and were from day one.

[Troy]

I have, unfortunate to say, grazed a few curbs, and in some of our dodgy streets, hit some rough dips, but I didn't have this problem until the tires were rotated from front to back.

So I'll rotate the tires back and seen what happens.

[Troy]

OK, here's some pics of the tyre's. First two are one of the tyre's originally from the front now on the back


First picture probably makes it look a lot worse


This is one of the tyre's originally from the back now on the front