Hi all, I know this has been discussed before and I've read the lengthy thread where the thinking varies from tires to alignment, etc.

Its driving me nuts on my all stock sedan and even scares me a little when the roads are snow covered.

So, can I ask that if you have this problem with your car, can you post if your car is awd or not, if you are running the stock tire size, what make and model tires you have and what pressures you are using.

I'm trying to determine if its more prone in awd cars and if things are possibly made worse if running directional tires.

So... mine is a 2012 G37x sedan (50k miles) running 225/55/17 Yokohama Envigors (directional pattern) summers that still have about 75% tread and Bridgestone Blizzak WS70 (directional pattern) winters that still have about 75% tread. Cold pressures set to 33psi.

Thanks,
Mike

 

So you're mixing summer tires on one axle with winter tires on another. That will cause all sorts of strange handling issues.

 

So, i've had some pretty horrible experiences with tramlining on my car over multiple years. It happened both on stock wheels and tires and still with aftermarket wheels / new tires.

As the tires wore down it got even worse and by the time it was time to replace my PSS the car was all over the damn place

Took it to the dealer, they said it was fine, took it to get alligned at a tire shop, they said it was fine, took it back a while later, they said it was still fine. But amazingly, each time i took it there the printer for the alignment machine was "broken" so they couldn't show me the alignment specs. interesting, huh?

Then i got new tires, still tram-lining but not as bad. Then i took it to ANOTHER shop and they did the alignment and i find that the toe is horribly out of spec. He re-aligns it and the car drives amazing, better than it ever has before. Goes totally straight.

So my conclusion:
-The car was delivered with a bad alignment, it only got worse over time
-The dealer lied, or they couldn't figure out what was wrong. They said everything was fine
-The first alignment shop i went to lied to me multiple times, and didn't actually put the car on the rack. In fact i know they didn't because after i lowered the car they told me everything was in spec despite the fact i had -3 degrees of camber.
- Taking the car to a better shop fixed the issue and proved it was caused by bad alignment.


My car is an X running 245/45/18 Yokohama Advan AS (previously running Pilot Super Sport of same size) Running around 33 PSI.

I think your issue is alignment.

Oh and you mentioned the car not going straight in snow, that's always going to happen... nothing you can really do about that.

 

I'm finding myself feeling this kind of tramlining much more recently, not sure why. I did get the car aligned a few weeks ago and had the rear toe corrected with toe arms, which should give the car better handling. Everything is in spec according to the printout, except for front camber. I have all-season tires that have about 10k miles on them. Again, I didn't feel anything like this as described above until a few weeks ago which is weird because I just got the alignment.

 

I run the Envigors in the summer and the Blizzaks in the winter. I get the same feeling with each (during the months they are on the car).

 

Thanks for the info. I will have to re-read it all and digest but wanted to comment on this... it wanders the same all the time, I just especially hate all the correcting when driving on snow covered roads when you are being extra careful with speed, braking and steering. That's all I was getting at.

 

IIRC the caster is set quite a bit lower on the X models vs. the RWD drives. Having less caster can cause more wandering as the wheels aren't as locked-in as they would be w/ more caster. I'm sure this is done to augment the AWD system but it may come at a price ragarding tramlining.

 

Any idea if they went beyond factory specs? Or use the factory spec adjusting to make things perfect as opposed to close enough? Did they give you a report of the before and after?

Thanks

 

Yea i have the paper somewhere. He got the toe pretty much zeroed front and rear and it made all the difference.

 

Interesting... I posted something here: https://www.myg37.com/forums/g37-sed...kis-sways.html

I have the same tires as poster above (BF A/S 2's) and highway driving has been similar for me...

 

I switched to my summer Envigors about a month ago and notice the tramlining is noticeably less than with my winter Blizzaks.

My nephew recently purchased the same car as mine and it has Michelins (don't recall the specific model) and his car doesn't exhibit the same feeling.

Maybe it mostly is tires!