Tires causing bumpy ride quality?

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I have Michelin LTX M/S 235/75R15's on my Dodge Dakota. Truck has 98,500 miles and the tires are 3 years old and have 55,000 miles on them. They have always provided a good smooth and quiet ride quality, and good traction on wet and dry roads. This is a 2 wheel drive truck and I have never taken it off-road or done any heavy hauling with it.

My tires "look" to have a little less than half the tread left, and are probably close to the 4/32" tread replacement benchmark. The last couple of months I have noticed a bumpy ride quality, at about 30-40 MPH which is especially noticeable when driving at those speeds in city traffic. The ride quality from 40 on up to cruising speed at 60 to 70 MPH is bumpy too, just not as easily felt at those speeds.

Question is, will aging tires that still appear to have usable tread left cause a rougher ride the older they get? I feel this as a vibration in the floor pan/gas pedal area where my foot rests while driving and in the steering wheel. All the suspension components are either new or relatively new or they still are in good shape. I keep it in alignment with a 3 yr alignment policy, and I have a lifetime rotation and balance policy. When they only need rotation I do it here at home every 6,000 miles at alternating oil changes. I just had them re-balanced a few weeks ago and I shadowed the tech while he did it so I know the tires all balanced out to zero.

Sorry for a long post but how long can I realistically expect to run a set of these LTX's? There are a few good deals on new tires out there now and I'll replace them if need be. I hope my fellow BITOG'ers can help me not buy tires if I really don't need them. This was my first set of Michelins and despite all this trouble now I was really impressed with the way they wore and lasted this far.

Thanks for any help you guys here can offer.
 
Try getting them re-balanced. My TripleTreds hve 48k on them now and had a slight vibration at 50 mph. Re-balancing took care of it.
 
I find that Michelin's are overpriced. In order to soften the ride, try reducing tire pressure. unfortunately gas mileage then goes down. i don't like to be wasteful, so i usually run the tires until they're worn out. but from reading the tire reviews on the
tire rack dot com site, i notice that some people do notice the same thing you're complaining about. my advice would be to go to
tire rack dot com, and look at the survey results for the tire you're interested in, and look at ride quality and road noise rating, and also see what the huge numbers of people who write in report. on that site, the reviews for ride comfort for your tire is 8.6 and noise comfort is 8.5 either excellent or superior.
Your tire ranks #8 in their ranking, and the best tire for you
is the General Grabber HTS. In your size, it goes for $89, plus shipping. I would study the chart on their site carefully before you make your decision. about the grabber, people say that noise over expansion joints and road imperfections is much better, in a person driving a Suburban, compared to his oe Bridgestone. If you look at it, this is actually a phenomenal tire, even has superior deep snow traction, ice traction, superior ride comfort, noise comfort, and superior in all categories, to rank #1. so if you have a spare $360 + shipping +installation and balance, that's what i would do. personally i don't go for the lifetime balance because my tires don't go out of balance that often. I can't remember the last time i had to go out and have my tires rebalanced. the michelin, in your size, is $16 more, per tire. that $16 would easily pay for the mounting and balance, and you'd have something left over to rebalance them in the future if they, for some reason went out of balance. plus you'd have a much better and quieter tire, with better performance in all categories.
 
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the tripletread mentioned by norquist, is the #2 ranked tire on tire rack. in your size it goes for a whopping $123 - not a good bargain in my view.
 
I forgot to mention why to get them re-balanced. If this vibration just showed up now, it is possible their machine needed to be calibrated again.
 
As mentioned, a re-balence at a different shop might cure it. I've ran much older tires with less tread with no problems. Rotate the tires again using a different pattern then the last time. Its also possible that a driveshaft, U-joint or axle bearing are at fault.
 
The Michin LTX is an excellent, PROVEN tire that has a good ride, superior long life, and excellent build quality....while other brand new designs{like the General Grabber} may test out slightly better in current Tirerack surveys, keep in mind this is a brand new tire and long term performance,build quality, and tire life remains a mystery....you had excellent service for 55,000 miles out of your LTX...they are probobly just getting hard from years of being exposed to heat and lots of miles of use-typical of all tires-
 
I just had them rebalanced about a month ago. The vibration was present for a few weeks before that. I also had both outer tie rod ends replaced at the same time. One was loose, and thinking that the other side probably wasn't far behind, I had both done. Re-balancing helped some but the vibration is getting more noticeable. I figure the tires are hardening with age. The tire tech didn't think anything was wrong with the tires like bad belts or separated belts/cords or things like that. I know an out of round tire will cause vibrations and not balance right on the machine, but nothing like that showed up either.

I think I'm just due for a new set of tires, even though visually the Michelins still look good and have some tread left. I think I can get a good deal at this local tire store that is running a "trade-in" special on a new set, provided your old tires still have useable tread. I may look into the new Cooper truck tires this next time. I hear they have a real soft and quiet ride for a truck tire.

LT4Vette, it was Tire Kingdom where I got the Michelin's. I got the lifetime rotation and balance so they don't charge for balancing as long as they are on the truck.

Thanks for the help here. I really do appreciate it.
 
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Does it seem to be one tire, all tires, I didn't take the time to read every word, probably should huh? Ply separation could be a cause for the vibration as well. As the wheel speeds around heading toward the pavement, it being separated would slap against the ground, and possibly that area could lead to the bumpiness effect from lack of material beneath the tread. Potholes are a @$@ you know, as well as big cracks, while tires are supposed to be resilient against these road defects, different factors and variables could exceed the limit of the design of the tire, could you agree to that?

So I say try the balance, it's cheaper than getting a new tire. If it still does it, I'd be looking more like the other suggestion of the joints and the tire, a lot of defects can't be seen by the eye. In aviation they actually have to penetrate them with X-ray to view the defect. It has been shown that there are defects under the treads that could have led to an aviation catastrophe had they not been changed according to the time "cycle" limit.
 
Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
I just had them rebalanced about a month ago. The vibration was present for a few weeks before that. I also had both outer tie rod ends replaced at the same time. One was loose, and thinking that the other side probably wasn't far behind, I had both done. Re-balancing helped some but the vibration is getting more noticeable. I figure the tires are hardening with age. The tire tech didn't think anything was wrong with the tires like bad belts or separated belts/cords or things like that. I know an out of round tire will cause vibrations and not balance right on the machine, but nothing like that showed up either.

I think I'm just due for a new set of tires, even though visually the Michelins still look good and have some tread left. I think I can get a good deal at this local tire store that is running a "trade-in" special on a new set, provided your old tires still have useable tread. I may look into the new Cooper truck tires this next time. I hear they have a real soft and quiet ride for a truck tire.

LT4Vette, it was Tire Kingdom where I got the Michelin's. I got the lifetime rotation and balance so they don't charge for balancing as long as they are on the truck.

Thanks for the help here. I really do appreciate it.


Did not see this until I was re-re-reading the thread...I am sorry for my lengthy post, but still I stand by the fact that defects can not always be seen by the naked eye, that's why commercial aviation such as the big airliners are in analysis programs that analyze the tires after they have lived their life cycles before being retreaded or chopped.
 
That's almost how the vibration feels, like a slapping of a bad spot in the tire hitting the ground as it rolls. I don't have any of the howling or roaring noise from the truck like you would have with a bad wheel bearing. As far as I can tell my ujoints and driveshaft are all OK. I have no clunking noise or vibrations from the floor area like you would have if that was the problem.

It almost feels like something stuck to the surface of the tire causing it to feel like I'm running over a bunch of small bumps in the road in succession.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
Good to hear. For me, I think you'd only notice the Ujoint (or CV, explain later) on acceleration or deceleration of the shaft, where there would then be slop in there. My 1986 Bronco II I had, used CV joints exclusively for the drive shaft, where as my mom's 1984 Bronco and you know similar vehicles were Ujointed. I noticed around the joint cuff if you will, the bearing rubber cover, was torn. It had leaked the grease, or more so the dirt intruded and dried up the grease in Phoenix. It was fine after it was rolling, but accelerating made for the worst rattle/knocking. It was real bad on hills. I found a shop that did replacements, for 100, opened up the boot (that's what I meant earlier) and showed me the bearing track and how I had very little life left. If it's consistent, I'd still favor the tire.
 
This sounds like irregular wear - which is caused by misalignment and aggravated by insufficient inflation pressure and insufficient rotation practices. Even the best quality tires can't overcome a misalignment condition operated over 10's of thousands of miles.

So while you are shopping for tires, shop for an alignment tech who knows what he is doing.
 
I went through the same thing with a set of Kelly Tires on my Aerostar. They had about 40,000 miles and plenty of tread remaining. The symptoms you are describing are almost identical. It was cord separation, and time for 4 new tires and an alignment.

As CapriRacer said find an alignment tech who knows what he's doing, and someone who can properly balance tires. Long story short, I lost 2 wheel weights one on each of the 2 front tires because the tech put inner wheel weights on the outside of the wheels. I went back and had all 4 tires rebalanced, not one was balanced properly, this was a few weeks after the installation. We put trust in professionals and a lot really have no idea what they're doing.

Frank D
 
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
We put trust in professionals and a lot really have no idea what they're doing.


Agreed, kind of like Wal-Mart's hiring practice, they'd hire just about anyone to work in the TLE, but really a lot of the time they don't know what they are talking about. It makes me even more upset when they try to talk like they know but they end up sounding stupid to me. I used to work for Wal-Mart 98-07. I didn't work there, but I knew the horror stories. Don't get me wrong on this though, there are good techs out there for TLE, just it really does go good with what Frank said.
 
For now I don't need new tires. Turns out the last balance job was done incorrectly. In fact, the guy had even used the wrong type of balance weights, one of which slung off the wheel it was on some time yesterday. I have a lifetime free balance and rotation policy on these tires so I had the wheels re-balanced at a different location of the same tire store today and the vibration problem is gone. For now at least.

Thanks again for all the help guys.
 
Sometimes the low cost (in your case it's free) is the correct solution. If you didn't try to check and re-balance at another location, you would waste good $ to replace a perfectly good set of tires that can lasted another year or so.
 
Tires should be replaced at 1/8 inch or higher. They are more opt to catch road junk when they reach around 5-6/32, considering they start out at 10-12/32 new. I have found that tires pick up vibration or uneven wear and have to be replaced due to that reason than actual wear of tread. You have gotten your milage out of them by that time.
 
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