A Cake On

I just put my summer wheel and tire setup on the car and I now have this lovely whirling/humming noise coming from the tires or wheels. The car seems to be pulling to the left a bit now too. The car was just aligned last week and was driving perfect prior to me putting the summer wheels on. My summer setup is 18x7.5 +45 Enkei RSV wheels with Falken Ziex 512 tires.

I think it may be a safe assumption that the car and suspension are not causing the problem because this wasn't happening when the stock wheels and tires were on the car. Some online reviewers of my tire say it's noisy, but I know what they sounded like and wasn't displeased with the extra sound of the tire. This is something different though.

I do have some negative camber in the back and when I placed the wheels on the car today, the wheels that were in the back last summer have been rotated up front, and vice versa. I have been doing some online reading that suggests the uneven tire wear may cause this kind of noise. The tires were only on the car for six months last year and they aren't that unevenly worn. The camber is a little off but the toe has been zero'd out.

I think I am going to have the wheel balancing checked. After that I am going to spray some water in the street and do a big smoky 5 min burner, maybe that will wear the tires nice and even....LOL If that doesn't work, maybe I will rotate the front wheels back to the rear and see if that works...

curls

I have the exact same symptoms w/ my summer tires just being put on last weekend. I think it's a combination of a shorter, stiffer sidewall transferring noise and vibration a bit more, and possibly uneven wear.

Do you mark your tires when you take them off in the fall, so you can rotate them upon putting them back on in the spring? I do, and it is like rotating every 10,000km (since I drive about 20K km per year, about 50/50 summer/witner tires). It helps, I'm sure, but this year I think i'm just a bit more sensitive to the slightly increased noise from the summers - probably because they're a bit more worn out than when new, which often translates into noisier tires.

A Cake On

Yeah, I mark them before I put them away for the winter and use that as a guide for my rotation for the new season.

The only thing that is strange is the my winter wheels have some considerable wear and they don't have any more noise when I rotate them.