My car just came back from the dealer after the 100,000 km tuneup. A few days later, I started to feel, when driving slowly (such as, when you just start moving) that the wheel pulls itself quite forcefully a bit to the left, then to the right, and so on. Once you get a little speed, it stops doing that, but it still feels odd in a way I can’t quite explain. I checked the tire pressure and they’re all fine.
I know there are some people around here that are very knowledgeable about cars (which, alas, I am not). Any ideas?
The dealer likely removed the wheels to check the brakes as part of the service. They may not have put the wheels back on properly and they may be wobbling a bit. If you have someone stand outside the car when you start moving, they might be able to see what’s going on. In any case, take it back to the dealer as soon as you can. I might actually recommend having it towed if you have AAA. If you’re comfortable jacking up the car, you could jack it up and check each wheel to make sure the lug nuts are tight.
One other possibility, further down the list: you didn’t say exactly how new the car is (100k miles could be seven or eight years, or a heavily-driven four or five), but newer-model vehicles have computerized lane assist where the car actively tries to steer you into the center of the lane if it thinks you’re drifting. I’m currently on holiday driving a rental car that is very aggressive about this, to the point I find it distracting and a little dangerous.
So if your car has this, it could be that you previously disabled it and then forgot, but your dealer has turned it back on and you’re not used to it.
Again, I don’t think this is the most likely reason, but it’s possible so I’m throwing it in.
Well, it turns out it was a bumpy tire. A quick check, a new tire, and all is well. Thank you all for pushing me; I was all set to get it to the shop sometime next week, which would have been unwise (the shop guy described my old tire as “a time bomb”). Thanks all!
Like a real bomb?
Can modern tires fail catastrophically?
Exploding tires used to be a thing, but I thought that was back in the 1970’s. You used to occasionally see pieces of tread lying along the side of the road.(heavy truck tires, I think).
But back then, I used to get flat tires often. Nowadays( for the past couple decades), I can’t remember the last time I pulled the jack and spare tire out of the trunk. Tire technology seems to have improved.
It’s a fair guess that tire technology may have reduced the likelihood of blowouts, but as long as tires are pneumatic devices operating under inflation pressure and high centrifugal force and heating, and subject to manufacturing defects or impact damage, they’re going to be able to blow out from time to time.
I encountered loose lug nuts a couple of times and the wheel was making a knocking noise as it flexed away from the hub. I also saw a friend’s pickup truck that he bought used and turned out to have a ball joint held together with some nylon rope that was initially behaving as described in the OP and shortly after careening out of control around the road as it came loose.
My understanding is that pieces of truck tire treads lying on the road come from retreads coming loose, not the whole tire exploding. Retreading is basically gluing on a new strip of tread to an old worn tire. It was done mainly on truck tires because one tire losing its tread on a multi-axle truck would not be as dangerous as it would be on an automobile.
Did you happen to see where on the tire the bump was? I’ve seen sometimes a sidewall bump protrude out. The rubber is thinner on the sides and may stretch if it gets damaged.
It was on the tread, about 1/3 of the width from the outer edge. I passed my hand across the tread, and I could feel a very distinct ridge, so to speak.
Very much so. If you damage the belt and get a bulge on the side of your tire it’s actually hazardous to remove. Some tire places have actual tire cages to protect their employees.
It’s fairly rare with consumer tires, though. The pressures are pretty low. But in a truck, rolling on a frozen wheel bearing or a locked brake with a full load? BOOM! It happens all the time.
Another reason wheels pull - uneven tire pressure. My most extreme example was a friend’s car where one front tire was 15psi and the other 32psi.
I recall too on a road trip in my dad’s car around 1980 when the (almost new) tire started making a knocking sound. The tread was actually separating, a strip of it was hitting the wheel well on each rotation. Apparently it was a defect with that make at that time.
I’ve had at least three instances of tire bulge on three different cars. One caused a vibration. The other was not noticeable, but a visible bulge at highway speeds on an extended road trip was not reassuring. The third, the dealer pointed out the bulge during annual service. Most likely cause - hitting potholes, a Canadian tradition, damages the sidewall.
My BMW has been getting new tires on the installment plan - in 10 years, I must have had 5 or 6 flats. I had the most recent- a nail in the tread, which was easy to repair this time, so no new tire. OTOH, I’ve had a Tesla for almost 6 years now and no flats…
While that is true about the large strips of tread, I have personally witnessed truck tires exploding on two occasions. It is like a bomb going off! Once I had just passed the truck and was just past the wheels when one tire let loose. The second was just a few weeks ago. This time I heard the explosion but did not see it directly but passed the pieces of tire a few seconds later.
Another time I saw two connected rear wheels coming towards me on the highway. They jumped over the median barrier into my lane and careened towards me. I slowed way down until I could see they had settled on a straight course towards the shoulder then gave them wide berth as I passed. I never noticed a truck without wheels, though.
I have had a wheel come off from incorrectly tightened lugnuts, luckily for me I had pulled over to the side of the road before it became completly off and rolling down the road. When the lugnuts gave way it was like a gun being fired as you could hear them whizzing through the air like bullets. It was the front drivers side tire and my rotor dug into the pavement about an inch. Had I continued driving the vehicle I most likely would have flipped due to the front grabbing into the road and the rear wheels continuing to drive the vehicle forward.
I count this as one of the times I almost died because I had been going over 70 mph just a minute or two before.
My dad who was mechanically inclined always told me when you change a tire etc. to drive a few miles and re-check the lug nuts. The tire store I frequented, that uses hand-held power torque tools, asks you to come back the next day for a check… which they quickly do with a hand-held ratchet torque wrench.