[MightyMo]

So it's been 15K miles since I tossed the 30K mile old stock Goodyears and picked up some 265 Kumho STX tires. At the very first they were a bit louder than the stock tires, and they have gradually been getting worse and worse ever since.

Well, on a recent trip to Mt. Lassen (sorry, no pics, *everybody's* camera had a failure of one sort or another, quite the comedy of errors) we tackled about 50 miles worth of dirt forest service and logging roads. As I checked my tire pressures after one such excursion, the dirt on the tires followed by just a little pavement driving to clean off the portions of the tire that contact the road all of a sudden threw into stark relief the reason for my growing noise problem.

[Pics pulled for now]

As you can see, the uneven tire wear is purely on the inside edge of the tire. It's exhibited on all 4 tires in roughly same proportions. Because it's on all 4 corners, typical tire problem causes like blown shocks or defective tires are out the window, which as far as I can guess only leaves alignment. Too much toe in maybe? No idea. Weird that the Goodyears were fine for 30K, while these started developing problems almost from mile zero. Anybody else having similar issues? Especially you all with wider aftermarket "light-truck" tires, please let me know your thoughts.

 

[bob1]

Anybody else having similar issues?

I have my original stock tires on the MO with 20 thousand something miles. I noticed a what I called feathering and had a thread around here someplace. Under warranty and during my first tire rotation, the dealer did some specs on the alignment machine.
It was out of spec and they did an alignment and rotation.
A few thousand miles later, I found the same feathering going on with the tires that were now rotated to the front. I had checked when it was first rotated and they were flat and level. The same "feathering" had now started on those tires.
It is not bad, you can not see it but if you run your hand on the outer and inner edge, you can feel it stepping up as your fingers pass over the tread design. Some people say it is somewhat normal due to cornering. I don't know about that.
Bob1

 

[zebelkhan]

I have a slight cupping problem on all four tires too but they are not bad. I can barely feel them when I run my hands over the tires. Not enough in my case to have a lot of noise yet. I have the OEM tires with 27,000 miles.

 

[Eric L.]

I find it hard to imagine that a small increase in tire width would lead to alignment issues like that, but I suppose its not inconceivable. I have had no strange wear pattern on my stock tires, but I'll keep an eye out anyways. I had a wheel alignment done at the 6000 mile mark for the steering rack TSB, and now have around 26,000 miles total.

 

[nissanlove]

our first murano(goldie) came from the factory totally out of alignment which caused severe premature wear on the inner and outer edges of the tires. in this winter, this misalignment caused the rear end to just kick out whenever it wanted to. it was extremely dangerous to drive the car then. 15k KM later we bring it into the dealer and they admit that there is a problem and end up putting 4 brand new tires on and setting the alignment correctly. never had a problem since. mightymo i'd go to nissan and have then totally re-adjust the suspension(toe, camber, caster and alignment) maybe there is still hope to save the tires.

 

[mgthe3]

All tires feather on aggressively driven cars/trucks.
But…
In my experience with some pretty aggressive tires, the wider the grooves in the tire combined with smaller blocks on the tread pattern, cause the leading edge of each block to endure most of the abuse. Consequently, the more aggressive your tread pattern, the more you must rotate your tires from one side to the other effectively making them rotate the other way. At some point in wear, it gets extremely loud when you do this if you have let it feather too much. You will have put up with it till it wears those new high leading edges of the blocks back down.
The wheel cambering (leaning in) in the corners accelerates the wear---on the outside edge when "pushing" (driving hard into a corner) and on the inside when accelerating out of the curves.
I had some firestone 23 degree super aggressive mud tires on a 4x4 I had that the dealer warned me that I needed to rotate at least every 800 to 1k miles if I drove them on the street. I forgot about that for the first 2k miles and they were so feathered that when I did rotate them, you had to almost scream to a rider to have them hear you. They were loud brand new, but went into the twilight zone when I first rotated them.
Cupping is different.
Cupping is usually caused by a crappy or dead shock not returning the tire to the street fast enough and keeping it there so the shock allows it to skip down the road after a bump. That is self fulfilling and usually a cup will just induce another and another until a rhythm is set up making you feel like the tire is out of balance.
The moral of the story is, the more aggressive your tread pattern, the more frequently you will have to rotate them. If they are wearing just on the inside you will have to swap sides on the wheels. If they are feathering across the entire crown, you will have to swap sides of the car.

 

[Kris]

mgthe3

Great post! Now I am sure I will never put tires with agressive tread on the Murano...

 

[MightyMo]

I've religiously rotated my tires every 6K miles and also maintained my tire pressures, plus there are no such problems in the racer community so I don't really buy the 'more agressive tire is the problem' theory. My steering wheel is slightly off, but I missed the 12K "adjustment" window of the warranty to get a new alignment, so it sounds like I better go get it aligned and see what turns up.

 

[MO in TO]

I have just had 4 Toyo Proxes S/T installed and they are awesome!! (post to come soon with pics of new rims). Sorry to hear of troubles with the Kuhmo, it was to be my second choice......

I have some Bridgestone Potenza RE9301's on an Audi A4 1.8T quattro, and they are now making horriffic noise with about 35-40 km on them........

p.s. I had an alignment done recently because I always felt my steering pull towards the left if left on its own. With the alignment and new tires, the tracking is true with much less driver input and effort, yet I feel the road and the grip in my fingers so much better than OEM..........

 

[senza]

Carl's Kuhmos are "directional" tires and cannot be rotated from one side to the other.....try increasing tire pressure(say 5 lbs) and see if that helps...

 

[mgthe3]

yeah, I noticed that they were directionals. That's the bad thing about directionals, you can't reverse them for fixing feathering.
But, directionals are best in the wet no doubt. I do love the style in the tread. I remember when gatorbacks came out after indy/cart cars started using them as rain tires.

Hopefully the increase in pressure will curb the cupping, they are nice tires.

 

[MightyMo]

So I finally took my Mo to Custom Alignment up in Mountain View CA and had them check it out.

Turns out the toe was off, as was the rear camber, here's the specs:

Before:
Front Toe -1/16"
Front Camber -0.3/-0.4
Rear Toe -3/32"
Rear Camber -0.9/-1.2

Spec:
Front Toe 0" to 1/32"
Front Camber -1.1 to 0.4
Rear Toe 1/32" to 3/32"
Rear Camber -1.3 to -0.3

After:
Front Toe 1/16"
Front Camber -0.3/-0.4
Rear Toe 1/8"
Rear Camber -0.8/-0.8

 

[Tyler_Canada]

Looks like your front and rear toe are still out of spec. The front more so.

 

[hfelknor]

Agree with Tyler.
I think Custom Alignment has some splainin to do.

Homer

 

[MightyMo]

That's what they recommended given my tire wear patern. They said while the toe out is the primary cause, I was exacerbating things by running wider tires with big agressive tread blocks.

CA is a serious performan tuner shop full of race cars and the like, all the local bay area racers take their cars there, so I trust their judgement. There was even a Bently Continental GT in their parking lot if that helps, the SECOND one I saw today (the other was on the freeway during lunch), what are the odds of that...

 

[Eric L.]

That's what they recommended given my tire wear patern. They said while the toe out is the primary cause, I was exacerbating things by running wider tires with big agressive tread blocks.

CA is a serious performan tuner shop full of race cars and the like, all the local bay area racers take their cars there, so I trust their judgement. There was even a Bently Continental GT in their parking lot if that helps, the SECOND one I saw today (the other was on the freeway during lunch), what are the odds of that...

Now thats a clever shop. It makes sense to me that that the alignment correction with those values would even out the wear in the opposite direction. Try getting that kind of insight from your local Firestone Alignment Center!

 

[Ray Cole]

I have Pirelli Scorpions and I think I have the "feathering" described on some of the posts.

The tire noise seems to be getting worse, almost unbearable. Of course I did not rotate my tires.

Any chance that switching sides and reversing the tire rotation would even out the wear and begin to reduce the noise over time?

Thanks!

 

[MightyMo]

I would think that reversing the rotation direction should balance the wear out a bit, but if it's a directional tread pattern you're not going to want to do that until the rainy season ends. I'll give it a whirl come spring on my Kumhos...