RSA's - make sure to look inside
 

To all you RSA owners - took the time to check all of the tires from the outside of the car and quite frankly I thought that I was OK with the RSA splitting issue - all of them look good as below:
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...35_53_full.jpg

Then I decided to stop by the Goodyear up the street from me and sure enough, when we raised it in the air look what we found on the driver's side front tire:
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...35_54_full.jpg

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...35_55_full.jpg

Goodyear replaced the tire for no charge as it only had 5K miles on it, and more than 9/32 of tread (10/32 is new), and I had them recheck the balance of both front tires / wheels, and now NO SHIMMY!!

Killed two birds with one stone this time - MAKE SURE AND CHECK BOTH SIDES OF THESE TIRES! You never know what lurks there!

That is scary...someone should report these tires to NTSB or Cdn version of same

Just out of curiosity, 04SEelite, what pressure are you running in your tires? In the pic, they sure do look "round". Mine at 30psi are squished a lot flatter on the bottom. :confused:

Mike

I've been saying it for months - the RSA's are sketchy!!!

I've been running 34psi front - 32psi rear - found that when I ran them this way it minimized the "shimmy" - now that they rebalanced the tires to "0" on both sides (the passenger side was 3/4 ounce off from the factory) the shimmy is gone - Goodyear inflated fronts to 34psi, and left the rears at 32psi.

Hope this helps - they indicated that I must have been doing something right because all the tires were wearing evenly and no abnormailties in the tread area - just the splitting sidewalls. The were aware of the problem when I brought the car in and knew exactly what to look for. Sounded like Goodyear is aware of the problem, but handling it on a tire-by-tire basis - they were more than fair - a "free" tire is more that I expected, and all I had to pay for was the re-balancing of both front tires and I was out the door...

Sounds like you were treated well. I'm about to change my rims this week to snows. I'm having the 18's balanced on a Hunter machine and I'll make sure to have them inspected thouroughly on both sides of the sidewall. Good pics of the problem.

Take care and glad to help - there is not a Hunter in Omaha so I had to settle for spin balance but at least the minimal shimmy that I had is gone - it's really great to drive the Max without having to fight the wheel to go straight between 45 - 60mph - it's no doubt the way the Nissan Gods intended...

Thank god for the ORG!!!! I was in the dealership today for strut issues. While the car was up on the rack I took a look at all of my tires. All 4 have splitting in the sidewall area on the inside of the tire. The front end was worse than the back. Guessing this is due to the fact that the front tires do a lot more work than the back ones. I run 35 PSI in the front and 35 in the back too. Never had shimmy issues. We'll see how goodyear handles my case. My car has 7500 miles. No joke, go check out your tires.

Hmm now im concerned... i only have 3 k miles on my car and im getting my oil changed tommorow at the dealer. i dont think i get to go inside while they do that... should i mention anything to them or just take it to goodyear?

Ask the lube tech to take a look at em. See what happens. I would also take them into goodyear to examine them. Always double check, it's your life afterall.

Glad that you had them checked! I would take any MAX to Goodyear to have them checked - the dealer won't fix them, and will just refer you to them anyway - like I said, they (Goodyear) were aware of the problem, and fixed mine for the cost of balancing only as I only have 5K miles on the car and the tread was "like new" other than the sidewall cracking - glad that I could help!

The problem with the RSA is the following. There was a bad batch of tires made in one factory. I don't know which one yet...The tire "recipe" was not followed. Too much silicon was used in the tires making them too soft. The weight of the car has caused the tires to crack. That's all I know for now. The Just Tires goodyear dealer was awesome he filled me in on the problem. He too has seen several cases. Goodyear should pay for everything. Ask 7 times if you have to. Don't take no for an answer.They dropped the ball on the tires so they should fix them and any associated repairs too (balancing and mounting). Don't let them tell you otherwise!!!!

Actually - paying for the balancing didn't bother me - the Shimmy went away after they replaced the tire on the front and a rebalance...Would have paid for the balancing at twice the cost to get rid of the shimmy!! :clap:

Thanks for the tip[beer]! Only one of them had these defects, wish it were all four. I hate to change only one.

Forwhat it's worth, only two of mine had cracks, but I reasoned that they were all from the same batch (and the numbers confirmed that), so I insisted they replace all of them so I wouldn't have to go through this again. And they did.

Mike

Is there anyway to find out by looking at the tire if mine were from the affected batch (other than finding cracks...)? Like, an ID somewhere?

Look here for some further info

Look there to see which tires I had went bad, post your tire serial#, if you have/had bad tires, if you can so we can start a database. Look at the link above for a how to find serial#

how do i know what number to look for can anyone give me a number to look for on the tire thank u

My 20" Pirelli P-ZEROs are smooth as silk ;) I know off topic :)