I experienced this this morning and yesterday when I was leaving work. Could cold tires produce this sound? It sounded + felt like the tire was flat and rubbing against the inside of the wheel well. I actually got out and turned the wheels and felt all around... it looked ok so I kept driving. Same deal with the right-hand turn...
:confused:

edit: it's not when I'm moving fast, it's when I am slowly turning right after leaving a parking spot...

It's the compound in summer tires, doesn't react as it should in colder weather.

Yes. Summer tires turn into hockey pucks when cold. They skip over the surface of the road when you are trying to make tight turns, like pulling in/out of a parking space or driveway.

Just expierenced the strange rub sound this morning :P Temperature was below 32F and yup crazy flat tire sound when turning hard left.......O well, went away once tires warmed up.......glad to see I wasn't the only one effected.....

- Z is garaged kept

Hopefully you don't plan on driving on those tires in the snow. If you are just driving on them in the colder days you will have noises like this as the inside tire skips across the pavement on a tight turning radius. I think it was about 10F this morning and the rubber on your tires had the consistency of plastic.

In the winter it takes roughly 15 minutes of regular driving to get your summer tires up to temperature. During that time avoid at all costs: acceleration, deceleration, and turning. :icon17:

They are very dangerous until you get them warmed up. And like Chris said, don't even think about driving them in snow. Not even the least bit of snow.

hahaha^


Thanks for the advice, all. I have been reading about how bad these tires are in the cold/snow/cold,wet roads. My boss thinks I'm being overly cautious for not wanting to drive when it's cold out. It's not the same as the stock tires on his FWD Mazda 6!

And for anyone else reading - if you think you are going to be OK in the snow, even a little, think of the snow getting packed into the already thin treads in your tire. Now you have slicks. Ice slicks. Hockey puck ice slicks. You get it..

I see myself covering the car up once we actually get some snow on the ground here in my area. It was definitely 16F when I left this morning. Single digits tomorrow I hear..

So just to confirm - the thumping I'm hearing is the cold tire on the pavement, not some rubbing in my wheel well, right?

Right. Its the tire skipping over the pavement.

can he use one of these?

http://www.autoracing1.com/Images/20...reWarmers1.jpg

Haha, that would be awesome!

at sub freezing temps you'd have to do burn-outs to get tires to summer temps. :D

but ive tried summer tires in the past in snow in my dd. doesn't work very well at all.

You can get them up to pretty decent temperature. :)

But yeah, when it's like 10 degrees out just be careful. :icon17:

FYI I put all seasnons on for winter, mostly for temperature. Cost me about $1k installed for Continental ExtremeContact DWS tires and they are highly rated for light snow.

That's a good idea. I am not worrying about it this year but next year I am probably going to slap some Michelin Alpin PA3s on a set of winter wheels. They give great dry performance and are still great on the snow (not as good as some but still way better than an all-season). Here in NOVA we have cold winters but we really don't have to do too much snow driving, so something like the Alpin would be nice.

Get some winter tires with some other rims. A lot of members like last years have bought the 18" OEM used and put Winter tires on them.