can a slightly feathered tire do this?

[markus]

my shop called to tell my car is ready. they fixed the passenger side window and reset my oil light. i told them about the noise and they said they couldnt replicate the problem. total bill is $60.31 but they coudnlt replicate the noise. they think it might be the tire. the hub has no play and spins freely. the outside edges of my front tires have some slight feathering. my rear ones arent. but before i swap font and rear tires is there anything else i should check?

[Jehu]

I has scalloped tires from driving with bad upper CA's and Bushing and after i had them fixed the front end still wabbled.I swapped the front tires with the rears and problem solved.

[markus]

well called my shop back and told them to swap the front and rear tires and see what happens. my rear ones are wearing normally.

[Jehu]

Knowing I'd had the upper CA's and bushing replaced as well as earlier the tie rod ends, if not a mis-worn tire or bent rim what else could it have been. When i got the car it had the 50 mph shimmy and hub centric rings fixed it but driving it before adding them must have pushed the old CA bushings to break and shortly after adding the hubcetric rings ( for the Rondell 58's) front end wobble began to increase especially under braking. I had the CA's and 750I bushings done leaving a slight vibration when braking so i replaced rotors and pads and to my astonishment there was now a much more pronounced warble at 50.I first thought the Hubcentrics had been left off but that wasn't the case.Then i feared i had bought warped rotors but before i took them off and went to yell at the rotor guy i went to a rim trueing place to check my Rondells.They showed me the tires were unevenly worn.The same tires I'd put on days after buying the car and with all the funky front end problems so i had them swapped with the new rears and voilà, smooth sailing. So by way of a process of elimination what else could it be if all these factors check out?

[markus]

im just curious to see if some slightly chopped/feathered tires can replicate the sound a wheel bearing makes when its failiing.

[Jehu]

If you have a continual crunching ,grinding noise i'd thing bearing but that would be obvious omce you get the wheel off the ground and spin it. Surely they couldn't miss that.Other ideas are a stuck caliper but there you'd be pulling hard to that side isn't there a kind of dustguard arond the hub? part of the strut housing?Could that get bent and be rubbing as the wheel rises and fall?Anyway eager tohear what you find out.Good luck.

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

im just curious to see if some slightly chopped/feathered tires can replicate the sound a wheel bearing makes when its failiing.

At slow speeds.

It's kind of a metalic crunching sound going slow and a whine or howl at higher speeds.

Feathered, scalloped, and cupped tires can all make noises at various speeds, and vibrations too, but tire noises tend vary with road surfaces and sound more 4X4 trucks with off road tires.

[Tiger]

Scalloped tires means bad shocks.

[Tiger]

You need alignment job done... outer feathered tires means the alignment is off in the front end.

[Jehu]

Scalloped tires means bad shocks.

I have that on the to do list in the next few weeks. I was told the right front strut was bad when i bought the car.Just wants financially feasable at the time to do the more pressing fixes as well as struts and shocks but i expect to have them on by April.Then some nice Z rated tired for Summer fun..

[BMWCCA1]

E34's have been feathering front tires since they were new and did it on the original tires with factory alignment and no wear on suspension bushings. Sure, worn components or bad alignment could be at fault but they'll still do it if every thing's perfect if they just don't like the tires. When new, the Conti's sucked but the Michelin MXV4s seemed to wear just fine. Problem was the originals didn't stick that well and the replacements from Michelin dealers had two-fewer belts and the sidewalls were thinner, too, so what little road feel the OE tires had went away even when using the same model and brand not from BMW. We had good luck with Bridgestone RE960 or something like that (this was 1995, remember). I'm running Tire Rack's Avons on 17x8.5 rims and after about 10,000 miles they've gotten noisy and feathered. If you use tires with the outer tread blocks that make them susceptible to this wear pattern, you may have to rotate them VERY frequently. BMW used to recommend if you wanted to rotate, to do it every 3,000 miles or don't do it at all. It would be nice to gather info on what tires won't wear like that on an E34.

Interestingly, over the years I collected many full-sized alloy spares with new tires from E34s (I used to take them out and replace them with BMW OE steel wheels to save the alloys for bent rims I'd get on auction cars), and I put a full set of the new Conti's on my Chrysler van and within 15,000 they'd cupped the same way they did on the new E34s. I've since used two sets of cheap Bridgestones on the same van and have not had the same problem without any alignment, and I know the second set of shocks are shot (200k). I realize this isn't much help but maybe someone can tell us what tires they've run for more than 10,000 miles that don't do this on an E34. I'm betting they're either Michelin$ or Toyos.

[markus]

turns out it was the front tire. you can hear the tires really howl now that they are in the back.