Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
Source of Mysterious Noise Identified - 2015 Ford Mustang GT Long-Term Road Test
Edmunds.com
Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,315
Source 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.
0
Comments
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.
Good help is hard to find.
I would say Stokes owes you one.
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?
Stokes better make it up to Edmunds!
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.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
And of course the wheels on the wrong ends is a mistake. What would be the point of purposely doing this?
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.
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.
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.
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.