well I am having a huge problem with my car rite about now. I have an '06 and everything is 100% stock for the exception of the tire brand. I replaced oem for Falken 452 (all 4) using oem profile and after the car was high speed balanced and alligned it began to pull a little bit to the right after a few thousand miles. took the car back where it got alligned and they said it was within specs. now a little after 2 months not only it pulls to the right (not that much) but at slower speeds it makes that "wosh wosh" noise as if I had a flat tire or something, and its getting lauder by the day. Usually u hear it as you slow down to a complete stop. its so loud rite about now that I dont wanna drive the Z anymore. I havent been to any dealers yet but I can tell they're going to give me a hard time for not having "OEM" tires. the place where I serviced the car says the only thing they can do is rotate tires left / right for an aditional cost of course but that MIGHT NOT solve my problems acording to them... the car has 25k and tires were replaced roughly at 19k miles. but I noticed that a lot of people here is complainning about this feathering issue at about the same miles 20-25k but an '06 ??? PLEASE HELP ME!

 

by the way I serviced the car at good road, also known as g-road if that matters. they seem pretty good at what they do.

 

if your car still pulls then your issue is one of 3 things:

1) Alignment is still not right

2) Radial pull which comes from the tires

3) Bent or damaged suspension part which makes 1) your problem also because you can't align with a bad part.

If 1 and 3 is not your case then look at the tire. Have the tire shop do a 180 which means rebalancing and turning the tire on the wheel 180 degrees. If it still pulls then have them swap tires and see if it still pulls the same direction. If it doesnt after the swap then you know it was the tire.

If it's not the tires and you have mechanical wear on the fronts, then you do have to replace those tires and redo the alignment. The shop that did the alignment should prorate the cost of a new set since they didnt do the alignment right. This could be a long shot but make sure that they are using the revised specs for the alignment. If they can't figure it out then have them pay for an alignment at the dealership since they can't get it right. As for the type of tires you have, those falkens shouldnt make a difference as long as you are running the correct OEM sizes. My 03 started to feather bad @ 7k miles so mileage really isnt an factor in determining the problem. Also, it might help if you can post a pic of the wear so that we can determine if it's true feathering or not. Good luck.

 

thanks 4 the quick reply there. im going to take some pictures tomorrow and post them here. i dont abuse the car or anything like that but yeah the guy at the shop said it could be radial pull and the issue "could" be fixed by rotating tires left/right however by "feeling" the tires with his hands he noticed some of what he called "flat" spots.... i couldnt tell you more than that. and the reason i didnt take to a dealer in the first place was because I was afraid they would stratch my wheels. oh well.

 

so there is a revised alignment procedure.... see I dont know much about these stuff oh and I almost forgot he also said that he could get the problem fixed for good by replacing front tires along with what he called "toe adjustment/modification" which is is part of the alignment. this is really pissing me off.

 

Flat spots might cause a pull and generally the symptoms are that whoop whoop whoop sound. It is very rare next to never that a tire would have a flat spot being from a defect. Most of the time the tire would be out of round or have a weak belt first. I would be careful in buying into the flat spot reasoning or using that term first because they could say it was caused by hard braking, which is a common cause and abuse on your part. But like I'd said before, post some pics so that we might understand what you are looking at.

 

thanks a million jdm!! ill post them up sometime today...

 

here they are...
At this time i was able to see what the guy was talking about. the front tires look pretty bad for a 6k miles tire. :\ defective? feathering?


left tire:












right tire:

 

and I noticed the problem is only on the inside of each tire.... parts of the rubber stick out.. as if only part of the tire is touching the ground or something like that. very odd.