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Polygonal tyres

MalcH

Active member
Thoughts please.

I have repainted my wheels on my daily Alfa GT and whilst all the wheels were off I swapped front to back. Now I have had the car for just 12 months and the original rear tyres (now on the front) were quite new when I bought the car. I have replaced the original fronts (now Falkens).
So my current setup is Goodyear F1 Eagles on the front (were on the rear up until Friday last week) and Falkens on the rear.
Having just bought another old banger (1997 Audi A4 for Winter use, in bloomin good nick) I went upto Leeds on Monday night in the GT to get some eBay wheels for the A4. I noticed almost straight away a rumble/whine like really badly worn wheel bearings.

So last night I took one of the wheels off the car to see if maybe I had distorted a back plate or something. Nothing catching and the wheel rotation felt very smooth and no lateral/vertical play so I did not suspect a bearing. I then checked the tyre..

If you look at the last block you can see flat spots. Basically the tyre on the inside edge is polygonal there are about 20 regular flat spots.
I have read things from speed bumps to worn suspension components. I doubt there is any adjustment on the rear suspension on an Alfa GT.
One last thing, I have recently replaced upper and lower front wishbones and drop links but note that these tyres were on the rear and not the front. Though somewhere I read badly aligned front suspension can affect the rear. I am going to get 4 wheel alignment before the car is used again properly.
 

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Similar thing happened to my Dads Alfa 156 years ago. He bought the car brand new and it had Michelin Primacy tyres on it.

He hadnt driven it for a while and when he first went out in the car he had a rumble/whine like you did.
So he took the car to the Alfa dealer suspecting rear a wheel bearing and Alfa told him they had no UK stock of rear wheel bearings!(hard to believe, but typical Alfaromeo:tongue3:). But they also told him that the rear wheel bearings just dont go in these cars, especially seeing it only had about 20k miles on the clock. Upon further road testing and investigation they found the rear tyres were out of round, they were replaced with some new Pirelli's and everything was fine again...

It was nothing to do with alignment though, as they checked that for him, just turned out to be crappy(expensive)French tyres!

Incidently i had also had the same problem many years ago on my Peugeot 306, which had... yep, you've guessed it, Michelin Primacy's on the rear!
 
Thanks Greg, I have also heard similar comments on the Alfa forum I visit regarding these Goodyear F1 Eagle tyres. Apparently there has been some grey imports which were a little dodgy. TBH It would be nice to think it was just a set of iffy tyres.
 
I have Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD3 on my VW Golf, and have had no problems, but i do recall hearing/reading a while ago about some dodgy ones that were not 'E' marked which were inferior.
 
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