Rotated on summer wheels / tires – now my ride is weird

I always seem to have a few things going on with my car… (Scott C. would go so far as to say it might be a little cursed.)

Anyway,  the most recent item is that upon rotating off my winter wheels / tires, and rotating on my summer tires, my ride is now “weird”. The car is pulling to the left…. more pronounced at low speeds (if I loosen my grip on the steering wheel, the car will want to go over into the oncoming lane). It also feels a little squirrely on the highway, pulling around rather than rolling straight… almost like I’m driving on ice. It also shakes a bit more than usual at certain highway speeds. The ride was much more behaved when I still had the snow tires on.

I’ve not done an alignment since I’ve owned the car (2 years), and am also probably down to my last summer with these tires (came with the car.) I did have to tap on one of the front wheels with a rubber mallet once or twice to get it to pop apart from the rotor when changing them out, but didn’t think that would be enough to mess up the alignment. I checked the pressures… I’m at about 27 or 28 lb. all around, which is where I normally keep it.

When I have a chance, I’m going to try rotating the wheels around to see what changes. I’m guessing I either have a tire going bad, or I just need an alignment. Thoughts?

Discussion

Thanks… Great information.
I just took a look… the codes are facing out on 2 of the 4 tires. Looks like they were manufactured in 2010.

This may be redundant, but if you can’t find a date code, your tires predate 2000! I had that when I bought the 10th Anniversary car. Still running the car specific Michelin tires from 1999. Yes, period correct! But hard as a rock, cracks galore…

MB

To understand the age of tires, this helpful article from Tire Rack will be useful:

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?gclid=CjwKCAjw8LTmBRBCEiwAbhh-6EAy-Y-KBhNZef7EdnaN3tIIFoWUGNSGW3UItK6K4aynt0tfzhXZIhoCNTkQAvD_BwE&techid=11&ef_id=CjwKCAjw8LTmBRBCEiwAbhh-6EAy-Y-KBhNZef7EdnaN3tIIFoWUGNSGW3UItK6K4aynt0tfzhXZIhoCNTkQAvD_BwE:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!3756!3!254641199019!e!!g!!tire%20date%20codes

If a belt inside the ire is broken, you may be able to hear it if you take the wheel off and roll it along the road. I have just done that with my daily driver BMW. Had the same issue after mounting the summer tires after this winter.

 

MB

 

Yeah, not sure how old they are. You’re probably right… even though they have a fair amount of tread left on them, they could be old, since the car was not being driven a lot before I bought it. Alignment is on the “list of things to do on the Miata”, but hasn’t made it to the top of the list yet. Ride has felt pretty decent, and have had higher priority items to address first.

Going to move the wheels around today and see what changes. Meanwhile, starting to look at new tires…

Thanks.

 

 

How old are the tires?…2 years since purchase and no alignment?…shame on you

 

Rotate them to different locations…doublecheck the air pressures…get a good alignment…

 

but if those tires were on the car when you bought it, best guess is they are old…a recent new Clubmember had a similar problem with the tires on the low miles 97 he bought.  He had a shop tell him it was a bad wheel bearing…turned out the tires were 9 years old and hard as bricks, but PLENTY of tread…his new 15″ wheels and good tires cured THAT problem right away…the Koni yellows I just put on last week were just the icing on the cake.

They were near the end of their life so I replaced them. Once they were dismounted it was obvious as the side wall looked wavy.

Thanks Bill. Wondered about that. Were you able to tell by inspecting it, or did a tire shop diagnose it for you?

<p style=”text-align: left;”>I had a similar issue several years ago.  I had a sharp, severe pull to the left after switching my snows over. I put the snows back on and it went straight  again.</p>
Ended up being a broken belt in passenger rear Summer tire.