Round Rubber Thingies

A little over a year ago I put tires on the Mustang. When I did so I got a wobble at 15MPH that turned into a vibration at interstate speed. I took it back to the Ford dealer that had installed the tire they diagnosed a bent wheel and went into "not our fault" mode when I pointed out that the wobble wasn't there before the tires went on.

Yesterday I took the car to a wheel fixing place to get some curb rash taken care of and oh yeah,by the way while you are there...

The wheel wasn't bent.  The tire on the left rear had a band about 3" wide that was worn bald about 1/3 of the way around the inside of the tire, the rest of the tread was good. In other words, the left rear tire has been bad since it went on the car a year ago. If the dealers service center had just checked the tires instead of the alignment and balance they might have found it and replaced the bad tire under the tire manufacturers warranty, but I suppose that was too much to expect from parts replacers (I don't have much use for dealer "mechanics" ever since a Dodge dealer couldn't properly diagnose a pickup coil on the Rampage because there wasn't an OBD port for them to plug the diagnostic computer in to tell them what the problem was).

This is irritating for reasons I hope I do not have to explain. I had already decided I would never buy tires from the car dealer ever again, figuring that if you take the car to a tire shop for tires they know tires better than the car dealer, but since the first set got replaced for having basically the same thing happen (on a front tire this time) I'm done with Pirelli P-zeros as well.

Fortunately I found a tire shop that had the correct size (245/45-19's, Hankook Ventus V12 this time around) to put on the car at short notice, so the wobble is gone. I just wish I had done it earlier, that vibration was really irritating. It's funny, I had forgotten how smooth the ride really is on that car.

Today I get my new exhaust put on. The guy I got them from gave them to the guy that told me about them, I'm meeting him with the Mustang group today and one of the other guys in the group lives 15 minutes away from the meeting spot and has offered the use of his garage and tools to put them on, so they will be on the car when I get home.

Between the Subaru and the Mustang this has been an expensive month.