My tires are no longer…round??..

[Tyler Buzzard]

I have an 07 Jeep Patriot. The rear tires camber naturally. This has caused i guess humps on my tires for a easy description. It causes a ridiculous humming noise. I didn’t do much investigation because when I originally looked my control arm bushing was shot. I replaced that and it didn’t go away. That with the lateral arm rear brakes and hub bearing. There’s a fix for it but it’s a $150 part per side. I rotated my tires and the fronts are in the rear and the rears are in the front. The humming is it the front. Should I replace the front tires before we get snow or wait and see how it reacts. Also it’s a “4×4” as in when the front tires slip the tears kick in.

Topic

[college man]

If the tires were out of round your ride description would be bumpy. With your camber
being out your feathering your tires. My suggestion is to fix the camber problem instead of
wearing tires out premature and having noise and unsafe tires. Its may be expensive but
worth it in the long run.

[Alexander B]

This happens a lot to the rear tires on FWD cars, and is mostly caused by loose/bad suspension components or bad shocks, and a little by suspension geometry on some cars.. Regularly rotating helps in the latter case.

You’ve already fixed the bad bushing and moved the tires to the front. They might wear back into round, depending on how bad the wear on them is. If the noise is bothering you, replace them, but as far as snow goes, I don’t think it’ll affect performance much.
Overall, tire age, thread depth and pattern matter more for snow grip.

[Author]

Replies