So there I was minding my own business on I-70 near Vail, CO at about 70mph and feeling a funny vibration that kinda went away at lower speeds. Now this funky feeling started in Cedar City UT a day earlier after hitting a weird very tall steep side walk / curb entrance to the Starbucks parking lot in search of a breakfast sandwich.I distinctly heard a weird sound and thought I’d blown a shock or damaged a rear spring, but couldn’t and still cant see anything in that regard. So on arrival to Fort Collins CO I had Discount Tire do a rotate and balance of the tires. After which when hitting the road home a couple days later the truck felt really weird and had a rather strong pull to the left so I was steering pretty hard to the right all the way home, some 1200 miles... And had an uncomfortable vibration almost a wobble at 50 mph which deteriorated to a really crappy shake at around 70 on the freeway. They’d rotated the rear tires straight to the front and crossed the fronts to the rear (their “preferred tire rotation pattern”). Once home I swapped the front tires left & right and road tested and the truck which now pulled nastily to the right. So I reverted the tires to their original spots before any rotation and the truck at least tracked straight again, but had a really horrible shake at 65-70 mph and felt generally odd when driving at any speed.
So today I took it to Discount Tire in Escondido and explained the whole sequence of events and they seemed perplexed, but agreed to rebalance the tires and inspect them; and found this on the right/passenger rear tire…
A pretty major sidewall blister between the inner and outer layers of the tire near the tread. Tires are Nitto Terra Grapplers and have lots of remaining tread and have generally been nice quiet highway/offroad tires. Discount Tire says it’s a Nitto warranty failure, but is also replaceable via their ‘certificate’ program and looking for a replacement, but the specific model has been discontinued.
In the name of safety I had them put the spare on and wow what a differnce driving home. Normal feel and handling again and no vibrations up to 75+ mph. I am a bit disappointed that the Discount Tire in Fort Collins CO didn’t detect this though when they balanced and rotated the tires.
It scares me to think what might have happened had it fully come apart at freeway speeds of 70++ mph, much if that in thunderstorms…
So today I took it to Discount Tire in Escondido and explained the whole sequence of events and they seemed perplexed, but agreed to rebalance the tires and inspect them; and found this on the right/passenger rear tire…
A pretty major sidewall blister between the inner and outer layers of the tire near the tread. Tires are Nitto Terra Grapplers and have lots of remaining tread and have generally been nice quiet highway/offroad tires. Discount Tire says it’s a Nitto warranty failure, but is also replaceable via their ‘certificate’ program and looking for a replacement, but the specific model has been discontinued.
In the name of safety I had them put the spare on and wow what a differnce driving home. Normal feel and handling again and no vibrations up to 75+ mph. I am a bit disappointed that the Discount Tire in Fort Collins CO didn’t detect this though when they balanced and rotated the tires.
It scares me to think what might have happened had it fully come apart at freeway speeds of 70++ mph, much if that in thunderstorms…
