This is typical of a tire with a broken belt. From your description, I suspect it is not bad enough yet to identify the bad tire just by standing beside the car and looking at the tires. They will need to be raised off the ground, then spun, either by hand, or by running the engine. Usually then you can see the "tumor", or hump in the tread, but sometimes when the problem progresses real slowly, over many months of driving, the high spot wears down and won't show up easily. The people at any tire and alignment shop know what to look for when that happens.
Broken belts can happen to any tire, but my experience has been that Goodyear tires develop them just about the time the tread is worn to the point the tires need to be replaced anyway. We used to see a real lot of broken belts on Uniroyal tires, including many with very few miles on them. Those came as original equipment on GM front-wheel-drive cars. Those were some that had the high spots wear down making the bad tires hard to identify. A lot of people just bought four new tires to solve the shimmies and pulling problems.
An experienced alignment specialist will "read" your tire wear patterns to verify what may need to be corrected or adjusted. Part of that involves running his hands over the tread to feel the high and low parts of each block of rubber. Be aware that broken belts are often accompanied by steel wires poking out of the tread, usually near the edges of the tread. Those really smart if you get poked by one, so use care when touching the tires.
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Sunday, October 1st, 2017 AT 6:41 PM
