Source of Mysterious Noise Identified - 2015 Ford Mustang GT Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.comEdmunds.com Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,316
edited December 2015 in Ford
imageSource of Mysterious Noise Identified - 2015 Ford Mustang GT Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds conducts a long-term test of a 2015 Ford Mustang and discovers the source of a strange noise.

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  • defyant15defyant15 Member Posts: 74
    edited December 2015
    Wow. You guys must have been wondering what the hell was up with the FRPP kit.
    Given the wrong alignment settings and the wider wheel mounted on one of the front (and narrower on the rear) sides, I'm surprised this car didnt drive funny right out of the installer.
  • 5vzfe5vzfe Member Posts: 161
    Ive made a similar mistake: when I did my brakes I replaced my calipers as well and I put them upside down and on the wrong sides. Doh! It took 20 minutes of trying to bleed the system to figure out my mistake.
  • reminderreminder Member Posts: 383
    Attention to detail Boyz!
    Good help is hard to find.
  • longtimelurkerlongtimelurker Member Posts: 455
    I hate having other people work on my cars. When you put new tires on a car with staggered wheels and/or tires, you work on one wheel at a time, from removal off of the car, breaking down the wheel/tire, mounting the new tire on the wheel, balancing, to replacement on the car.

    I would say Stokes owes you one.
  • boffboff Member Posts: 91
    What a colossal blunder (with apologies to S. Turow).
  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    I'm not a big believer in staggered tires on a street car. Your average driver will never really see a benefit to it. It's just a bragging rights sort of deal. To me, it's foolish. You can't rotate the tires. Now, I'd like to see a comparison road test where you run your course with the staggered setup, then swap the rear tires out for a wheel & tire combo that's the same as the front. I doubt there will be much, if any difference.
  • explorerx4explorerx4 Member Posts: 19,963
    edited December 2015
    Jason,
    Go back and read about how when the tire(s) were replaced, it was all about getting the lowest price.
    That 'free' locking lug removal came back to bite you (Edmunds).
    My philosophy is to build a relationship with the service department, not just shop lowest price.
    Do you think the tires were mounted on the wrong end of the car by mistake?
    2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
  • subytrojansubytrojan Member Posts: 120
    Sucks!

    Stokes better make it up to Edmunds!
  • thecardoc3thecardoc3 Member Posts: 5,812
    Karma. Respect it.
  • saxdoggsaxdogg Member Posts: 38
    edited December 2015
    I agree. A post concerning your follow up with Stokes would be nice. May still be serviceable but it IS damaged.
  • longtimelurkerlongtimelurker Member Posts: 455
    These exact OEM tires, according to the mfg. are in size 275/40-19 not even supposed to be mounted on an 8.5" wide wheel - the minimum wheel width is 9" - so they're actually doing something at the left rear that is forbidden by the mfg. of the product, which opens them up to certain kinds of legal liability.

    Now, on top of that, when you take something with a section width of 10.9 inches and mount it on an 8.5"-wide wheel, and then you take something with a section width of 10.3 inches and mount it on a 9"-wide wheel...I mean, that has got to look kinda funny to the guy mounting the tires on the wheels, the guy putting them on the car, and I would say to the owner/driver of the car, who was right there taking photos of the finished product while the car was still on the lift. The sidewalls on the LF and LR tires had to look very different.

    Those two combos have got to mount up very differently, and also the guy balancing them should notice that he is dealing with four different offset/tread width combos instead of just two...the machine should be telling him that as it goes through the dynamic balancing routine. And given their location, Stokes has got to see a ton of staggered fitments in the vehicles they work on.

    The owner/driver is not supposed to be getting in the way of the employees, but if allowed to be that close, he is supposed to be maintaining a 10,000-foot view of the work and monitoring it to make sure it's being done correctly. I know I would be.
  • cobrysoncobryson Member Posts: 110
    @longtimelurker where was anything said about an 8.5" wheel? The picture clearly shows 9" fronts and and 9.5" rears...
  • boffboff Member Posts: 91
    I was worried about this, sitting in the waiting room of my favourite tire place as they mounted my snows on my 2015 GT. I almost thought of poking my head out to remind someone of the wheel size difference, but didn't want to sound like an a-hole.
  • roadburnerroadburner Member Posts: 17,830
    I have a friend who is an SA at the local BMW dealer; he told me that he has had a couple of BMW with staggered wheel widths come in with the wider wheels AND tires mounted on the front. The shop that did that must be a real top shelf operation.

    Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-2021 Sahara 4xe-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
    Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i
    Son's: 2018 330i xDrive

  • steverstever Guest Posts: 52,454
    edited December 2015
    Seems like "non-standard" rims should be keyed to the proper axle by a sensor. The TPMS can id a low tire, why not have a sensor trigger an idiot light when a non-spec wheel is installed?
  • bankerdannybankerdanny Member Posts: 1,021
    explorerx4 said:

    Jason,
    Go back and read about how when the tire(s) were replaced, it was all about getting the lowest price.
    That 'free' locking lug removal came back to bite you (Edmunds).
    My philosophy is to build a relationship with the service department, not just shop lowest price.
    Do you think the tires were mounted on the wrong end of the car by mistake?

    Edmunds has a long-standing relationship with Stokes and has spent multiple thousands of dollars over the past few years there and it definitely isn't because they have the lowest prices. Edmunds routinely spends more money than they should buying parts from and having them installed by a dealer. Just look a Dan's recent post about the SRT Charger's front brakes.

    And of course the wheels on the wrong ends is a mistake. What would be the point of purposely doing this?
  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    stever said:

    Seems like "non-standard" rims should be keyed to the proper axle by a sensor. The TPMS can id a low tire, why not have a sensor trigger an idiot light when a non-spec wheel is installed?

    @stever :
    I'm not sure how they could set a sensor up that way. The PSI rating on the tire is fairly straight forward, as long as the PSI is set within specs, it wouldn't throw a code. The old TPMS was based off of disparity between wheel RPM between left and right sides. However, short of a a sensor could monitor difference in tire height to calculate if it's "true" for a wheel width on a car, I can't think how they'd do a sensor that could tell if the wheel was too wide. If you tried a sensor that worked like one of those laser measuring devices, it'd send so many false codes, people would never use the feature, they'd disable it. The only thing I could think of would be an RFID chip in each rim, assigned to a location ("rear" or "front") or specifically to a hub (RR, LF, RF, LR) that the car could pick up.

    I still want to have Edmunds do a test run with all "front" wheels on the car and find out if it'll perform the same as the staggered setup. I bet it does. The tires are fairly close in size as it is.
  • steverstever Guest Posts: 52,454
    edited December 2015
    Yep, "chips" are tiny and cheap. (Wiki)
  • desmoliciousdesmolicious Member Posts: 671
    If you want to get those wheels repaired, I highly recommend aceautorecon.com

    No affiliation etc, I used them when I curbed my wheels. They came to me and once they were done I could not tell that they ever were damaged.
    It was about $100 for the one wheel, IIRC.
  • longtimelurkerlongtimelurker Member Posts: 455
    cobryson said:

    @longtimelurker where was anything said about an 8.5" wheel? The picture clearly shows 9" fronts and and 9.5" rears...

    Yeah, you're right. Forget what I said about too small a wheel...both size tires could be mounted on both size wheels.

    But everything else applies - if you take a 10.9"-section tire and mount it on a 9"-wide wheel, then take a 10.3"-section tire and mount that on a 9.5"-wide wheel, then put them both on the same side of the car where you can see them both at the same time, it's going to look strange.

    Bottom line...a shop in a location like this, where they see staggered fitments all the time, they have to be extra-careful, and should probably remove, break down, remount, balance and replace - one corner at a time.
  • chaser2008chaser2008 Member Posts: 4
    Ford should have differentiated the front and rear wheels/hubs by having different centerbore/hub diameters like Honda did with the S2000.
  • longtimelurkerlongtimelurker Member Posts: 455
    chaser2008 said:

    Ford should have differentiated the front and rear wheels/hubs by having different centerbore/hub diameters like Honda did with the S2000.

    Then for cars without the performance pack, Ford has to create two different part numbers for the front a rear wheels, even though they're both the same width, with the same offset - ? Solution that's worse than the problem.
  • explorerx4explorerx4 Member Posts: 19,963
    @bankerdanny,
    To the guy doing the job, money paid to someone else in the past, doesn't matter.
    They are trying to make a living now are being treated like an indentured servant.
    That's just my opinion.
    2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
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