I just had a set of Lexani LX 9100 205/55 16 tires mounted on my wife's '07 Sentra and whenever we drive on cement highways (the ones with the rain grooves), the front end dances side to side. I went to get an alignment, and the guy there told me it doesn't need an alignment, that the problem is the tires are gripping too much on the rain grooves and the 2 tires (passenger side and driver side) are basically fighting against each other.

I have never heard of this phenomenon, have any of you? Is this legitimate?
And I had the tires inspected remounted and re-balanced to eliminate those as a factor.

 

interesting? never heard of such a thing but sounds reasonable

 

Probably has more to do with the tread design than anything. Based on the class, those tires aren't that grippy.

 

+1 if the tread blocks are bigger on the tire then it will have much more surface area on the road. it does not mean it is "grippier" as in softer rubber.

 

get a second opinion. i've felt this too when my toe was out.

the lines in the pavement are made with the equivalent of a giant rake, they all run parallel. even if you were catching the lines they'd be going in the same direction, not fighting each other.

 

That happens quite often with cars that run camber, have something loose in the front end, and with certain types of tires. the old bias-ply tires were HORRIBLE about that kind of stuff, but the newer tires shouldn't be as bad. That will still happen with different tires and different roads.

lots of factors at play, but it's fairly common really. If it didn't happen with the old tires, then it's not the car.

 

i guess i didn't read hard enough. if it's only happening on that particular type of road and with that particular tire then i guess there's probably some validity to the claim. -1 cool point for me.

 

Thanks for the feedback fellas, I got the alignment done just in case, although sentras only have a toe adjustment, So now to hit the highway and see if it helped at all, they said toe was off about 1/4". Wish me luck.

 

pretty common, and can be exacerbated by things such as bad ball joints, among other things.

 

That happened sometimes on rainy days but wasn't that big of a deal so didn't waste my time to go see what was up to hear some B>S> and try these tires I'll give you a good deal!!