[Picturetaker]

I bought my 2007 E a few weeks back and as everyone else here knows the Goodyear Tires are junk. My tires had 40,000 on them and rode smooth and had no vibrations at 75'mph, but they are just low on tread. I found out that Sears was having a tire sale, so off to the mall I went. I have searched the forum and Tirerack for the past week to find what is best to buy and decided to buy the BF Goodrich Longtrial Tour. Well Sears only had the Goodyears in stock ( I wonder why?), but they said if I had time they would send the manager to a store 50 miles away to get the longtrails for me. I said go get the tires and was happy with a good deal and a 50 dollar Sears card rebate for buying BF Goodrich. Several hours passed, and they finally had my new tires on and I paid the bill. Then is when the trouble started. I walked around the E and noticed rather large wheel weights on three of the wheels and on the left rear three weights side by side that looked like it went 8 inches around the wheel. I went in and told the manager that this was not right. When you need this much weight to balance a tire you can and should break the wheel down and move the tire 180 degrees and rebalance the wheel or as they call it find the sweet spot that the tire and wheel requires the least weight. The manager agreed and had the tech break the tire down and rebalance. I noticed he tried this three times. And each time it took a lot of weight, and he finally used stick on weights on the inside to make the wheel look better. I knew in my mind this had to be a bad tire but drove off anyway. Sure enough at 68 mph the E shook like it had massaging seats. The floor was shaking and you could even feel it in your feet. I returned to Sears and the manager walked out and asked If I wanted different tires, I didn't even have to push the issue with her. She know the BF Goodrich tires had problems. Long story short they are going to put on the Michelin XC-LT4 tires (Sears version of the LTX m/s) for $80.00 difference with a $60.00 rebate from Michelin, and she is going to pick up the car at my wife's place of work install the tires and deliver the car back. To me this is good service and I hope I have better luck with the Michelins .

 

[in2steam]

It seems odd that 3 of 4 would be that way, i could see 2, and i have seen 1 now and a again. On the same hand those tires from the other store could have been placed the "special pile" because they knew they were bad and were willing to sell them to the first non over the counter sale. I would as a caution have the rims themselves balance checked before they are mounted, its possible that over the years that rims themselves are out of whack. At anyrate I have had both long trails and LTX's. While new the longtrails were good tires, but the michelens were superior in longevity and overall preformance. One thing I do know about sears and walmart is that get there own tires which are not always the same as those available from other sources. Thats not a statement of qaulity just that they are not the same.

Chris

 

[robgt]

Interesting...

I just bought 2 sets of BF goodrich in the past few months and they both work fine. Got mine at Costco. The current set of BFG LT's I have on my E have been pretty good. I've had it up to about 90 without any hint of shake. Weird...

 

[Picturetaker]

Update on the Michelin tires from Sears. They are very quiet and smooth at any speed that I drive, I am very happy that I changed over to Michelin, even though they cost more. This is the second vehicle that I have had problems with BFG's. I had a GMC Sonoma pickup with the BFG All Terain's and had nothing but vibration problems with them. I went on a trip to Tennessee and stopped two time to have them balanced, once Hunter Roadforce balanced. On the way back I tried to get three different BFG dealers to replace the right rear tire that was causing the problems. One dealer said it was normal for this agressive tire to vibrate. The other dealer wanted to sell me a replacement tire and send the supected tire back to Goodreich to be x-rayed, if bad they would make an adjustment for me. 300 miles from home this was not going to work. I finally stopped at a Sams club and just bought a new tire and fixed the problem. I guess I should of learned the first time to back away from the BFG's.

 

[1fastvx]

I have had the Yokohama Geolandar H/T-S on my E for 30,000 miles now and I love them. You should check them out!!

John

 

[Dom.five]

I on the other hand have had good luck with the BFG tires. I had a set of Michelin tires that gave me fits with the balance. That was way back in 1976 on my Peugeot diesel 504. It took about 6 weeks to get a set of tires that would stay in balance. Obviously with that car, I was not burning up the pavement. It barely had the power to spin the tires in the blizzard of 78!

With any tire, you can get one that's defective. Sometimes it's just a run of tires off the line that has failures. Other times, ( like the Firestone blowout thing ) it's just one model within a specific brand.

Recently, My luck with the Goodyear brand has turned bad. At one time that's the only tire you could get me to put on my cars. For the street or the track. My luck/experience with them had been outstanding! I can't say that today. I now would not ever, get another set of tires from Goodyear .,,,,,,. It's just the way things go.

Dom