[jyp007]

I have 2004 EX and have Goodyear Assurance Tripletread. I have been experiencing vibration on the steering wheel for last winter so I just had them rotated because it was past due to rotate. Once it was rotated vibration was still there, but now it's pulling to right. Before the rotation I thought maybe I need to balance the tire, but now maybe the problem is alignment.
Also, I'm thinking maybe the front end is loose cause when I make a right turn I could hear slight grinding noise looks to come from the brake disk shield rubbing or something. Not a constant grinding, but as if it's worped and only portion of it is grinding.

My ody is at 98k and this Goodyear is the third tire. It's fairly new, but from the beginning it wasn't all smooth. I had to go back to rebalance, but something was still there. I wonder if I got a bad set.

Could alignment get rid of the vibration as well?

 

[kenny1773]

sounds like you may have multiple problems, one problem could be a lateral runout on one tire.

Rotating tires does not change your alignment. Putting a tire with excessive lateral run out from the back to the front can cause a pull to one side. If you rotate back, does the pull go away?

You may also still need an alignment and balance. hard to say over the net

 

[Bill in Houston]

check the air pressure, too.

 

[William Wiles]

Look at the tread wear on the tires. You probably just have a defective tire. Did whoever you had rotate them even look at them.

 

[redmondjp]

Another thing that nobody has posted so far (must be no car racers here) is to check the CIRCUMFERENCE of all of the tires! In circle and oval track racing it's called stagger, where you purposefully use larger-diameter tires on one side of the vehicle in order to make it turn.

The exact same thing happened to me a month ago - I rotated my Les Schwab-obtained Federal Formoza FD-1s, and had a severe pull to the right immediately afterwards. Back at home, I started swapping tires around trying to figure out the problem and held up two of them side by side. I then noticed that one was visibly taller than the one one.

So I took out my 100' tape measure (which is flat, so it is easier to wrap around a tire) and measured the circumference of all four tires - it turns out the the tire that I had installed on the right front was 3/4" of an inch in circumference SMALLER than the largest-circumference tire. THAT was what was causing the pull to the right (it's not noticeable when the same two tires are mounted on the rear).

Three of the tires were purchased from Les Schwab in 2008, and the fourth (smaller-circumference) tire, which is the SAME SIZE as the other three, was purchased in 2010. So Federal obviously changed their P215-65R15 tire tooling between those two manufacturing runs which, simply put, blows my mind.

Oh, when I informed Les Schwab of the discrepancy in actual tire sizes that prevents me from rotating my tires, they had nothing to say and didn't offer to do anything about it. Needless to say, I won't be buying any more tires from them. /rant off

 

[Hogan773]

Resurrecting an old thread I realize. I hadn't rotated tires in over 20K miles (12K to 32K) and just did so myself a week ago. Car used to pull slightly left at highway speeds. Now car pulls right and it is noticeable above 40mph. I mean it's not horrible or anything, but I can notice that the wheel is cocked slightly to the left when tracking straight.

I assume this is just because I wore down one tire unevenly in my laziness to not have tires rotated for 20K miles, and now that I've done the rotation I've reversed something? (I moved the fronts straight back, and crossed the rears when coming forward). My guess is the tires have about 18 months left, so I'll probably just live with it and maybe the tires will start wearing in and it will get better, or worst case if will just stay the same.

I assume it would be stupid to try to run the left front tire at 1 or 2 psi lower than the others to "counteract" the pull right? My gut is there would be unintended consequences that's not worth it. I run my tires around 37 or 38 generally.