When I had this set of tires rotated and balanced for the first time I picked up a vibration. I can feel it through the steering wheel and the floor, it starts about 40 or 45 mph. It is not severe but it is annoying. The tires are Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus size 215/45-17, they had about 9K miles on them when I had them rotated. Before they were rotated they were as smooth as glass. I took the car back to Costco where I bought the tires and had them recheck the balance. They told me they were in balance and suggested that I drive the car for a couple of thousand miles and maybe the problem would go away, than didn't sound right to me. I took the car to another tire shop and paid to have all 4 tires rebalanced, they said they were not out of balance by very much. I then took the car to yet another tire shop and had them remove all of the old weights and start from scratch, it made no difference. So I don't think it is a balancing problem. Since then I have re-rotated the tires and the problem went away, I rotated them back and the problem came back. The car has a little over 50K miles on it and I had no problems with the OEM tires, the OEM tires were rotated twice in the 41K miles I used them. The wheels look fine and I'm the only one who drives the car, I have never hit a curb or anything like that. I think it is one of the two tires that cause the vibration when they are on the front. Any other ideas? suggestions? Edit: One other symptom I forgot the mention, when the road surface is very smooth (such as new asphalt) the vibration is barely noticeable, the rougher the pavement the worse it is.
somethings can't be balanced, like a defect in a tire. Could be that once rotated to the rear, it is less noticeable. I absolutely dislike having any vibration... I know what your are going though.
It does sound like a tire out of round which would be more noticeable on front than back. I had that happen years ago with a set of Goodyear tires on a company car. The Goodyear shop finally swapped the tire out with the spare (full size at the time) and the vibration went away. The tires had a lot of tread left so I took it to a front end/balance shop that had been around for years. They set up a fixed point just off of the tire, spun the tire and showed me where the high spot was. They were able to shave about 1/32 of tread off of the high spot and my vibration went away. I do not know that you have this same issue but it certainly sounds very similar. If this is the case, as new as your tires are, I would press Costco to replace the defective tire if you can identify that as the reason.
I am going to go to Costco today and talk to them. I suspect I can get either 2 new tires the same as I have (because they won't want to bother finding which one is bad) or they will offer to prorate them for tread wear and take them all 4 back so I can buy 4 of a different kind. Right now I am tempted to get 4 Michelin Primacy MXM4 LRR tires, it will cost me a few bucks because of the prorate but it might be nice to compare the fuel mileage between the two different tire types.
Either 2 or 4 new tires sounds like the way to go. F8L just put some of the 17" MXM4's on his car and has a thread on the tires. You may want to read it if you have not already. I know he initially took about a 4-5 mpg hit but really likes the tires in every other way. I put the 15" Primacy MXV4's on mine (just below LRR rating) and took an immediate 4 mpg hit. I have about 5k miles on mine and believe the mpg is beginning to increase a little. Hard to tell with the cooler weather and winter gas arriving, though. I need to add that the comfort, quietness and handling of the MXV4's are far superior to the OEM Yokohama Avid S33D's that I had. The mpg should recover as the tires break in and the tread depth goes down some. Even if it does not I think the tradeoff of all of the other improvements outweighs the loss of mpg. Good luck.
It sounds like you have a balancing problem that needs a Hunter Road Force balancer to resolve. If the tires are indeed out of round and cannot be balanced correctly, this Hunter unit will tell the technician that. However it is difficult to find a tire technician who understands how to properly use all of the functions on this machine. I would locate a specialty tire shop or the dealer. MB860 ?
I will definitely try to find a Hunter Road Force balancer if the "trade in" doesn't work out. Talked to Costco today and they said I could trade all 4 tires in and they would prorate them, so it depends on how the prorate works. I'm Leaning toward a set of Primacy MXM4 tires based on some of the positive posts here and the TireRack tests.
The mpg hit was from swapping to 17s instead of my 15s. It seems to be about a 6-8mpg hit now that I am employing much more gliding. If I didn't use any hypermiling techniques I think the hit would be around 5-6mpg. Compared to my old 17" Kumho ASX tires I think I have gained about 2mpg.
Thanks to Costco in Kennewick, WA I now have 4 new Michelin Primacy MXM4 tires. They prorated the remaining tread on my Michelin Pilot Sport tires and let me trade them in for the new Primacies. The Pilot Sport tires, which had the vibration, only had about 11,500 miles on them so they gave me a really good trade in. They also let me use a $70 coupon, the "out the door" price for the 4 new Primacy MXM4s minus the rebate for my old tires was $194. I expected it to be quite a bit more. Costo Kennewick gets a big PLUS for customer service from me. I am very happy with both the price and the service. Now I have to break in the new Primacies. Then I'll increase the pressure a little and check the mileage. After I have used them a while I'll try to make an objective comparison between the Primacy tires, the Pilot Sport tires, and the OEM Toyo tires.
Glad things worked out so well for you. That was a really good price for the rebate. It is always good to hear a "good news" story like this.
Absolutely none, but I am going to wait until I get 1K miles or so on the tires then rotate them to be sure the back ones are OK. My last set didn't show any problems until I moved the back ones to the front.
Please add your summary on the new tires and i'll include them into my thread on these tires. If the consensus is they they are great tires or bad tires we want everyone to know about it.
I think the tires I had on there would have needed replacement before I sold the car. The new tires I have now should still have some tread (legal amount) when I get ready to sell the Prius at about 100K miles. Estimated tread life on the new tires is rated at 10K miles further (55K vs 45K) than the old ones, plus I have 11K more miles on the car now. If I decide not to sell the car at 100K miles I will be able to go approximately 20K miles further without buying tires and for only $194 that seemed like a good deal. Also the new tires are "Green X" and, I hope, will give me at least two more mpg, but that remains to be seen. I really could have gone either way but I was tired of fooling with it.
