Pulls Left: Dealer Says Tire is to Blame; not an Alignment Problem

This is more from the comment and guess side. Tires, like any manufactured product, can occasionally be defective. Defective tires can cause the problem you noted. Since the tires were made by Goodyear and installed by Toyota and both sold to you as good, between them they should make sure your tires aren't defective. You did nothing to make the tires defective except drive, using some tread, but you reported the problem 5000 miles ago. I hope they give you one or more new tires.

 

I was in the retail tire business 25 years ago. I acknowledge a lot likely has changed in tire technology since then. Having said that, we would encounter from time to time a tire defect that we called (IIRC) a "radial pull." It was diagnosed by doing what your dealer did: verifying no alignment problem then rotating the tires and road testing.

So yes, the dealer's explanation is plausible. The replacement likely will be covered by the tire warranty. It's possible they may try to send you to a Goodyear dealer for replacement. That's OK (and might speed up the replacement process a bit) as long as you don't caught in the middle of the car dealer insisting it's the tire and the tire dealer saying it's the car. You might request that the car dealer contact the tire dealer to agree on the replacement first. If not that, at least have the car dealer document its diagnostic process and findings thoroughly, including the alignment settings.

 

Yup, I owned a car that pulled consistently despite a good alignment. The problem was cured by new tires. Unfortunately, that all happened on my dime.

 

they might try removing the tire and mounting the other way on the rim first to see if that fixes it. sometimes it does. otherwise, they will probably only replace the one tire if it's under warranty.

 

There is a TSB on this, which I found when researching alignment issues.

 

dogfriend,

When trying to open your TSB attachment, I keep getting the message "flie not found". Can you provide a link instead?

Ken (in Bolton,Ct)

 

It's a pdf. You have to download it to your computer, then open it with Acrobat reader.

 

Godiva,

It does download when I click on the link, but when I open it I get a "PDF"-type box (like I usually do) that says Adobe reader (in the top border) but with a big white box in the middle of it that has an error message in it that says "file can't be found". Have you tried to click on his PDF attachment, & if you did, could you see the contents of the TSB?

Ken (in Bolton,Ct)

 

I like my TripleTreds. They ARE noisier than the Integrity but they have much better grip and worked well year round including a 28" snowfall in 24 hours that the plows could not keep up with when they had about 35K miles of wear. When they hit 50K miles last fall, I got Hakkappelita RSi for the winter (on basic steel wheels) and will use the TTs until they have no more life for summer driving.

HOWEVER, Do not have the Integrity tires on 2 or 3 'corners' and something else on the others. If not exactly the same tire, they must match pretty close and anything you would WANT to buy won't be the 'same' as the Integrity. If they are willing to replace one or 2 Integrity tires (I'm SURE they won't do all of them UNLESS they can all be shown to be bad), you might want to drive them to 'end of life' before shelling out for new tires all around.

 

Sorry I missed this earlier. As others have suggested, you can expect just one tire to be replaced under the warranty.

Ideally, the two tires on the same axle should have relatively equal tread depth. (Do you know the depth on yours?) Of course, a new tire matched with one nearly new should be fine. A new tire paired with one with barely legal tread depth could create handling or braking problems. You're probably somewhere in between.

Here's another idea: Replace the other one on your nickel and use the old one as another spare. Story: The donut spare and an unrepairable road hazard last summer forced me to buy tires before I was ready. The Integritys had 27K on them, still legal, but I was planning to replace them before winter. When I awoke one Saturday morning to a flat, I had to scramble to find a complete set of tires that day. Replacing only one was not an option due to the tread wear. Michelin Hydroedges were among the tire models I was considering, though they probably wouldn't have been my first choice. But they were the only ones I could get that day. The others would have taken a week or two for dealers to order, and I couldn't be running on the donut that long. If I had had a full size spare I could have taken my time.

So when I replaced them I kept one of the old ones for this purpose. My plan was to buy a used steel wheel (I think a Corolla wheel fits), have the tire mounted on that, and keep it in my storage shed. If I have a flat around town I can slap the donut spare on long enough to get home. (Won't help on extended road trips, but they are pretty infrequent.) Then I can run with the full-sized spare for weeks if I have to, and I'm not forced into immediate action; I can get repairs or replacements on my terms. (I confess that I have procrastinated badly on this -- the tire still sits in storage without a wheel. Does me a lot of good, huh?)

 

Hi Ken

Were you able to figure this out? I would have responded earlier, but I'm in a primitive land where WiFi is very hard to find. I think its called Oregon by the natives.

I placed a copy of the TSB here: .Mac - iDisk

Click the arrow on the right side to download the TSB

 

I'm not very familiar with the Triple Treds. If you have a reputable Goodyear dealer locally, maybe they can help guide your decision.

Here is an excerpt from an article from TireRack.com that discusses mixing tires:

The best choice is to select the exact tire currently on the vehicle. This assures that the tire's physical dimensions, internal construction, tread design and tread compound are equal to the tires being replaced.

The second option is to choose equivalent tires from the same tire performance category that share the same speed rating, handling and traction characteristics of the original tires. While this isn't as desirable as selecting the exact tire currently on the vehicle, it can become necessary when the original tires are no longer available.
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Either way, not an optimal solution. Having said that, I would be comfortable exercising the second option for myself.

 

I had a non repairable nail puncture in one of the the GY Integrates (spell check suggestion) at 15k miles. I did not want to replace one tire (been there, done that, bad idea) but didn't want to replace all four either. So I bought two Michelin Destiny (X radial) put those on the rear, and put the best two GY on the front. I'm planning to keep the GY on the front until I wear them down to nubs or winter (whichever comes first) and then get another set of Michelins to match the ones on the rear.

No problems with different brands as long as they are the same size and matched in pairs on front or rear axle.