newFitOwner

It's been an interesting winter, and there have been deep freezes and mountains of snow, punctuated by thawing periods. As a result, we have craters in the road, often hidden by slush water. My new tires have taken a pounding on these "stealth" sink holes.

Soon, there will be an opportunity to visit the folks in another city, 5 hours drive away. The Fit is already prone to road vibration at 110kph and above. I've only slightly mitigated this with rebalancing in the past. It'd be nice not to have to put up with 5 hours of car shuddering.

Would it worthwhile to get a tire inspection before such a trip? I'm not sure what are the measures that can be taken if the tire is out of wonk due to the sink holes. I'm not even clear on the ways that a tire can be out of wonk. Distorted rims from the sinkholes? Apart from the rim itself, my web browsing of tires reveals that it's way more complicated than just a chunk of rubber, so maybe other things can be deformed. But I wouldn't be looking for a *new* set of tires so shortly after buying mine. Just wondering what are the ways that the tires could be degraded due to the banging, and what are practical solutions. For example, anything that requires removing the tire from the rims, I'd likely consider it to be impractical.

PrettyMuchBoned

Sounds like you wanna get em balanced. Do it....?

newFitOwner

The timing worked out great -- I switched to all-seasons a week before the trip. They balance them when they put them on. It runs great!!! No shudders. So the shudder with the Michelin Xi's was were either due to the fact that they are winter tires or rough balancing (though I did have them rebalanced, which only mitigate the problem a bit).