Bad Tire???

[Zilverado]

Man, it seems like forever since I've been around - just all together too busy I guess.

So I had the truck out on the highway today, and it seemed as if the pulling to right (which I've had for a while) was getting worse. When I got home I jacked up the front end and took a look around, but couldn't spot anything obvious. So I swapped the right and left front wheels. Took 'er for a test drive, and low and behold, the pull was mostly gone. Now there was just a bad shaking in the steering wheel - well, actually the whole truck - at certain speeds.

So after all this, I'm assuming the culprit is a bad tire. I can't really see any defect, but I haven't taken the time to look too close. Does anyone out there have any comment? With the fact that the initial pulling seemed to slowly get worse, a deteriorating tire does seem to make sense, but...

Any thoughts?

[rcbildr]

Sounds like it to me, and do not let this go. I've had an educational experience with this involving an 82 suburban I bought a while ago. When we picked it up (originally me and a friend of mine split the purchase cost) we knew the tires needed to be replaced and my friend had a newer set of tires, but we never got around to replacing them. The Burb had vibrations that would occur at certain speeds. I swapped out the rear wheels/tires (Most of the vibrations went away after replacing the rear tires) when I had to tow a trailer and planned on doing the front end in a week or so. Well the week turned in to a month, and many miles were put on the Burb until one day when I went in to work. During the entire trip I felt strange vibrations thru the wheel and in thru the course of 40 miles the left front tire failed on a freeway interchange.




Fortunately, I wasn't gojng very fast and was able to get to the side of the road without incident. A friend of mine who is a retired firefighter/emt said I got very lucky. The only signs the tire was old was some cracking on the sidewall, there were no signs it was going to fail where it did.

[Srubydo1986]

wow and poeple try to say when the side wall peels off the side of the tire and shows white it still good. Good thing i disagreed with them or that would have been me.

[Zilverado]

Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah, I think I'll be looking into this repair shortly. Fortunately, this truck is not a daily driver and spends most of it's time sitting on the driveway. None-the-less, summer time (camping and yard-work season) is coming, so I better look into it soon.

Any suggestions on a good all-around LT tire (the current ones are actually "P"assenger car tires)? I'll probably end up going to Costco to get it done. Here where I live, they've got a great selection of tires and the price is right. I got a set of BF Goodrich All-Terrain T/A's for our Pathfinder a number of years ago and saved around $150 over a tire shop - plus their service was excellent.

Thanks again.

[Zilverado]

Well, I swapped out the "suspect" tire for the spare and took the truck for another ride. The spare is not the greatest tire either, and its on a narrower (non-rally) wheel, but the ride was coniderably better and the "wobble" seemed to be gone.

I examined the bad tire a little closer and found the inside (white wall) looked VERY bad. The outside also had a continuous crack around the entire perimeter, right at the edge of the tread. Looks like she was ready to come apart on me.

I've attached a couple of pictures - - I guess it's off to the tire shop sooner than later...

[Srubydo1986]

those BF Goodrich All-Terrain T/A's are really good tires i had a set on my 86 c10. and by had i smoked them off

[84 400]

Well it could be a broken belt. my dads tahoe had the orginal firestone wilderness LE's on it untill 102,000 miles. the vibration got worse but the tread was not worn really bad or anything. we swapped it to the back and drove it that way untill inspection when we got failed for the tire. After viewing it closer we found that the belt had broken and it must have happened that day be cause we inspected it that morning. We imdeatly replaced the tries. The other three could have gone farther But at 102 thousand miles we figured it was time. To this day i don't understand how some peoples tires only last 30k? Then again i could make my rear tires on my 84 only last a mile or so iff i really wanted to

[Zilverado]

Yeah, I have no idea what's really going on with these tires, but I'm not too anxious to find out. Hopefully, I can find something reasonably affordable and get the set replaced before the heavier use season comes.