NFB.....Tire noise and what to do about it?

[SS_CarGuy]

Good Year tires seem to get very noisy as they age. I have experienced this in the past with Gatorbacks and now it's afflicting my Good Year Wrangler tires on our AWD SUV. The first 20K miles or so they were OK. And the tires still have a lot of tread left on them so I would hate to get new ones, but the noise is driving me nuts.

Will truing the tires help with the noise or am I just stuck with it? And if I do wind up replacing the tires, can anyone recommend which manufacturer's tires won't do this?

[Joe 1320]

Much depends on the design of the tread. The more knobby the tire for off highway, the more noise they will generate. Manufacturers even go so far as making asymetric treads to cut down on harmonics with a certain frequency. For what it's worth, I used Coopers on my Crew Cab Dually (Highway tread design) and they were quiet. I was never a real big fan of Goodyears. I've run them when I had little choice, but I never go out of my way to get them. When you true a tire, you shave down high spots to equal the lows. You should only do this if you flat spot a tire, a newer tire wears unevenly or is out of round. You'll lose lots of treadlife. Some race compound tires get shaved for added resistance to heat and better grip.

[wolfdogs]

thats weird...because, a tire is usually the noisiest when its newer... the deeper the tread, the noisier the tire...

now, if you have some cupping going on (you can run your hand across the tread surface lightly and check for that) you can get noise....

[Happy_Dan]

I was never a fan of Goodyears on my trucks either. I have had a lot more luck with Michelin and Toyo light truck tires.

[SS_CarGuy]

thats weird...because, a tire is usually the noisiest when its newer... the deeper the tread, the noisier the tire...

now, if you have some cupping going on (you can run your hand across the tread surface lightly and check for that) you can get noise....

After looking at the tires again, I can notice one edge of each block in the tread pattern is slightly higher than the one in front of it. I have seen this same pattern before on the rear tires of a FWD car if the tires aren't rotated often enough. I did rotate the tires about a month ago and reversed their direction to even out the wear but this may take some time. This could be the reason for the noise that is why I asked about truing the tire.