I am getting ripples or flat spots that run around the radius of my front and rear tires on the inside. they extend about 2-3 inchs towards the center of the tire the outside edges are fine. Why are they doing this. Its getting noisy in the cabin now and I want to find out how to stop them from doing this.

 

I take it from your sig you have an MC. Sport suspension?
Any suspension mods?
What rims and what tires? How many miles?
Have you rotated your tires, and if so how (F-B)?

M.

 

ry - Can you take me a pciture or 2?

Alex

 

It kind of sounds like cupping, which, on motorcycles, is often due to underinflation or bad shocks. I found this site which has pictures of various tire wear patterns for truck tires. Maybe you could look at some of those to diagnose which type of wear pattern you have and what may be causing it.

_________________

 

I've found the same thing. Rear tires have a distinct pattern of flat spots every 5-6 inches around the inside half of the tire. Fronts do not have this pattern, but are wearing more on the outside half of the tire. I have stock suspension and tire/wheels (16" v-spoke). You end up with a wha-wha-wha sound at speeds above 15 mph that can get lounder with speed & is worse when it's wet (???). I have 25 K on these (but this started @ ~15 K). I think this is because I have never rotated the tires (MINI recommendation - idiotic & I should have known better). Will be getting new wheels & tires soon (any sales planned Alex ) and will rotate religiously every 3-4 K.

 

The wear is only on the rear not as I had stated earlier. Its just so noisy that It sounds like it is coming from all four. I have Yokohama ES100 215/45 17. Is this normal wear or is the rear out of alignment. It seems just like the description of cupping.

_______________I have had these on for 12k and havent rotated yet.__

 

Looks like cupping, but is a bit funny IMHO:
Looks like a very closely spaced pattern, and only on the innermost edge.
Do you often carry rear seat passengers or cargo?
One of the reasons MINI recommends not to rotate is to avoid cupping AFAIK.
I rotated at 12k mi, too late. I'd say no later than 5k mi at most.
I would think your pattern is likely to be a combination of both inflation, but I'm not even sure which, over- or under-. Some kind of cupping occurs when the wheel bounces too much, which can be due to shocks, and tire pressure, or both, and also in relation to how much the car is weighed down. Could be the particular tire you are using. All things considered, it doesn't look as bad as some instances I have seen.
The only thing I can think of recomending is:
rotate tires very early one, maybe every 3-4k mi. If you have a feeling for whether your tires were - if anything - more over or more likely underinflated, then vary this a bit in the opposite direction.
M.

 

doh you're using ES100s? I'm have a set of Parada Spec2 that i inherited when i bought my wheels (second hand) and they have cupping as well! I'm pretty sure the two that have cupping were on the rear as they have more tread then the other two. I wonder if there's something about the Yokohama's you have to watch out for? Maybe rotation is even more important with them?

I would love to know if there's any way of fixing this, other wise i'm going to swap out all four!

 

how often are you rotating?

I think whats being misconstrued as cupping here is heel and toe wear Some agressive tread patters - ES100 because its sweeping V shaped tread pattern, Parada because it has very long large tread blocks. (any super directional tire can suffer, and grow noisy. this holds true for aysemetrical patters with large blocks)

The leading edge of the tread block is warn quicker than the trailing egde, resulting in annoying road volumes. This is preventer, or possibly even corrected by regular rotations. Tires of this nature, being very soft wear over 1/2 of their usable tread depth in the first 10k. Once a tire has heel and toe past this point its hard to reverse. All the more reason tha rotating every 3k helps.

Alex

 

thanks guys. I will try to rotate more often. If I do it every 3-4k it willbe about every 5 weeks.

 

are the coopers prone to flat spotting these types of tires? cause i had parada spec2's on my previous 98 prelude and they were only rotated when i found
wear on the front tires. never had this flat spot problem.

i already have some flat spot problem on my RF SP9000's that the dealer gave
me on my R90's. they were (i believe) under inflated for too long. :smile:

 

>>are the coopers prone to flat spotting these types of tires? cause i had parada spec2's on my previous 98 prelude and they were only rotated when i found
>>wear on the front tires. never had this flat spot problem.
>>
>>i already have some flat spot problem on my RF SP9000's that the dealer gave
>>me on my R90's. they were (i believe) under inflated for too long. :smile:

i don't think it's a MINI thing, as you point out you developed this problem with the SP9000 whereas I have the SP9000 and this never happened, even though i didn't rotate till 9K miles. so i think it's just a circumstance thing, under-inflated etc.

 

minhi- cool, i didnt think everyone would have this problem or it would be a huge mess. but im glad you're okay with your sp9000's cause ill be tossing mine in a couple of months and getting quieter tires (azenis st115's) which stereo fanatics
all recommended. by next spring ill be happy.

in a few months im going to be swapping over to my winter wheel/tire set so
the sp9000's will literally be put in the can very soon.