Anyone have experience with these tires?

My new (to me) 99 D has them, and it's got a pretty good "hum" coming from the front end. When we test drove it I wasn't concerned, was sure they were just loud tires, but as I put in more miles behind the wheel I'm beginning to second guess myself.

It sounds "almost, but not quite" like what I'm used to hearing from noisy tires. What concerns me is that it also sounds "almost, but not quite" what a bad wheel bearing would sound like...

I should have some time over the weekend to pull the front wheels off and check things over. On my list to check is wheel bearings, brakes, CV joints, and front diff fluid level, but in the meantime I was just wondering if anyone had run these tires before and knew them to be noisy...

Also, anything else I should be checking over?

 

Well a good way to check is do a tire rotation and if the noise switches to the back, it's the tires. If not most likely it's either out of alignment or some other problem. I'd start with a tire rotation first then alignment because it's the cheapest easiest fix.

 

this is going to be hard one to pin down without putting a different set of tires on the truck, all aggressive all terrain tires will 'sing'(hum) while driving down the road, and yes it does sound suspiciously close to a wheel bearing going out, however the noise will change going around corners if it is a wheel bearing, not so much w/ the tires.

 

If going down the road and turning listen to it and see if it gets worse turning either right or left. When the weight shifts it opens the bearing race on the bad bearing and that causes the sound loudness to change.


Almost, get your tires checked for anything in them and have the re-balanced.


Just got done with this on my wife's car and it gave EVERY indication of a bad wheel bearing. Well I replaced it, then swapped it, and finally ended up with a nail in the tire!!!! It was the strangest thing I swear!!!!!!

 

I'd take everyone else's advice and do the cheap stuff first like being 100% sure it's not your tires. Also, does the humming change at all with letting off the throttle, or
when coasting? or only occur at a certain speed? That would mostly likey indicate your differential is the source of the humming/noise. Mine has has a humming sound because of the differential gears and it goes away when I let off the gas, but cruising at about 40MPH it's the loudest.

 

The noise is dependent on speed. The pitch stays the same, but it gets slightly louder as you go faster. Also, at highway speed you can start to pick up a bit of a pulsating aspect to it. Coasting or accelerating does not affect the sound. I've also noticed no change when taking on and off ramps at the limits of how fast the D can take them.

This all leads me to still be leaning toward blaming it on the tires as I originally thought. The one thing that really bugs me is that the noise stays consistent even when I pull onto a gravel road. Then again, after all the plowing this winter, there's not much gravel left on them, so they're also a hard, smooth surface for the most part.

My 98 has identical rims and the same size tires. I'm thinking my next step is to swap the front tires between the two and see if the noise stays with the vehicle or with the tires.

I appreciate all the comments. What I've heard so far solidifies my suspicion that they're just noisy tires. But after all the troubles I've gone through with the 98 over the winter, I guess I'm beginning to be extremely paranoid about anything I hear that's even the tiniest bit "off".... I've got other bills that need caught up, can't afford to keep dumping entire paychecks into repairs every other week... (Which brings up another question, but I think that one calls for a separate thread.)

This is one of those frustrating "almost, but not quite" noises. It sounds almost like several problems that I'm familiar with, but not quite close enough to any of them for me to be 100% sure. It's definitely nice to have some other folks to bounce it off of....

 

Sounds like a plan, swap the tires and if the noise is gone then all is good. I'm also leaning towards tires, they might have feathering because of not being aligned, run your hand over the treads in both directions and see if it's smooth going one way but feels jagged going the other, that will tell you there's a small alignment problem.

 

Yep, that was definitely the case. Now that I notice that, I'm thinking that alone could cause a good amount of road noise. It's also pulling to the right a good bit. In hindsight, I probably should have mentioned that right off the bat....

I need to run down to Des Moines on Saturday morning and get the rest of my stuff out of storage from when we moved a year and a half ago. Had it stored in the garage of a buddies rental property for free, so there hasn't been much of a hurry to get it out, but he just got the house sold so it's now time. It's about a 3 hour round trip, so I'll be crossing my fingers the whole way that it is, in fact, the tires.

The reason that's significant is that my floor jack and jack stands (and lots of other tools) are amongst the items still being stored there, so I'm going to put off the tire swap until I get them home with them...

 

i would swap all 4 tires over since the rears can also be causing some of the noise and you will hear it if you only swap one axle worth of tires

however with the pull to the side i would say for sure you need an alignment

 

Oh, absolutely. Been planning to get both of the Ds into Firestone for lifetime alignment's sometime soon. Been putting it off for money reasons, and wanting to check over the front end components first to make sure they can actually do the alignment....