Tire Wheel Vibration - Tire Foam Inserts do come loose

[BearDog]

This a PSA message for anyone experiencing vibration form an out of balance tire that isn't fixed by a simple rebalance. The foam insert can come loose!

I took my MY in 3 times to get the tires balanced and quiet a vibration that would get really bad at 65mph+. I went to 2 Tesla dealers in CA, Palo Alto and Rocklin who were both worthless. They wanted to charge me for the rotation and balance with no warranty on the work and they did tell me that they won't warranty the tires if they are bad (out of round). I went to America's Tire and did a couple rebalances that would only last a day or two before the vibrations would come back. I asked them to dismount the tire and inspect the foam. We found it loose and bunched on one side of the tire.

The America's Tire guy said that on the newer tires they use less adhesive to anchor the foam so he's seeing more of these. We pulled the foam and all is well. I don't notice any noise difference. On the freeway the wind noise is still louder than the tires.

 

[TheSlaw]

YES! Thank you for this post. No one seemed to believe me that the foam was the culprit. Your post gave me the final push to just open it up.

TLDR: FOAM SEPARATION IS REAL, its barely glued on. Mine detached after 2k miles. If you have one of these tires lose balance out of nowhere, go to a goodyear authorized shop and have them open it up right away and save yourself the hassle of multiple balancing attempts (if you don't want warranty replacements, any tire shop can rip the foam out). Minimal/no extra cost to remove tire + balance vs a balancing anyway.

I have the same Goodyear F1s on a 3-week old model Y, and the foam detached. It started to vibrate badly. I tried to get help from Tesla and they were unhelpful, telling me to drive my undriveable car 3 hours to the service center in 2 weeks. I could have it towed, but if it wasn't a warranty item I would have to pay for it. And then fly to pick it up I guess. Then they said they don't warranty tires which was pretty confusing. Went around in circles for a while.

I've learned a lot in the process that I wish I knew earlier, so I hope this helps someone out:

I went to a local shop and they balanced the tire with a LOT of weight (5.25oz). Should be more like 0.25-0.5. Drove it and it was much better (not perfect) then it reverted to major vibration within 10 miles. They balanced it again (with a lot of weight again), saying they weren't sure what the issue was but now its fine. I suggested it could be the foam, they said it wasn't, they checked. I asked how they could know and if they pulled the tire off, they said no, they just tapped on it and can just tell (seriously). Not sure why I accepted that BS response. I didn't realize at the time, but they put the same amount of weight on (5.25oz) except this time on the exact opposite side of the rim (meaning they were now balancing the foam that had shifted to the opposite side). This 'coincidence' should have sparked something for them but I guess not. I noticed it after the fact by the weight adhesive foam left behind.

I eventually gave up on this shop, and on getting answers from Tesla. I called Goodyear (Canada) and they confirmed they don't deal with warranties through Tesla, you need to go to a Goodyear shop (Fountain Tire in my case, they were great). I asked them to pull the tire off first and sure enough, the foam was completely detached. The section that pulled off first (evident as it was folded over) had almost no glue on it, whereas the rest had very small inconsistent beads of a very slippery silicone type adhesive (see photo below, note no glue on lower end).

The tire was clean on the inside, the adhesive completely and easily pulled off. I asked them to pull another tire to check, and it was starting to detach in a couple spots but still in place. After that I told them to rip all of them out because i don't want the headache down the road. It came out easily by sliding a finger around it. Based on the foam and glue condition, I would say the other two were fairly well adhered and probably ok but who knows how long that would last considering the first one failed after 2k miles. This proprietary 'Sound Comfort Technology' is cheap 1" open-cell foam with inadequate amounts of adhesive silicone and QC/QA. Total joke. Goodyear offered to replace two of the four tires, with the same type of tires but the downside being none are available and I'd have to wait a couple months. I'm probably not going to bother - I'd end up with the same foam lined tires again and they still make you pay to mount/balance them. They would not cover the cost to unmount / fix / balance the tires this time to figure this out either. They only cover the tires, not the labour/shop time.

The car rides as smooth as silk once again. I think its louder now and has a weird echoing hum but I'm probably looking for it. My wife doesn't hear anything and thinks its better to not have to worry about it happening again...im inclined to agree. This has wasted many hours of time off on several workdays fighting with it on top of the googling to figure it out. If I had to do it over again, I would skip the inductions, buy Replikas and different tires with a shop / road hazard warranty and sell the stock takeoffs.

 

[blower]

With regards to the 'echoing hum' - that is the exact reason why the foam is put in the tires.

The foam does nothing to reduce road noise itself- what it does is reduce the cavity resonance. When you bounce a wheel with a tyre on the ground, you hear this 'dong' type noise - do the same with ones with foam in and it's just a dull thud. It is this 'dong' noise that the tyres with foam supress. On the road this noise is a wooing sort of sound, around 220hz usually - any uneven/rough roads will excite the tire and it can get quite loud.

Normally in many vehicles most people don't notice it - but the moment you have a quiet vehicle, such as an EV or you add sound insulation to a car, then this noise can become intrusive. I've always been sensitive to this and its irritated me - so much so i experimented with adding my own foam in a tyre - years before EV's existed (outside of the tesla roadster), or before tire manufacturers started adding it themselves. Every manufacturer is adding the same AB acoustic foam that was the result of research in a scientific paper that I read 10 years ago, and they have obviously followed the experiments from that paper.

After many failed attempts I abandoned adding foam to tires as I never found a glue strong or resilient enough for it to last 10,000 miles - without the foam braking loose and the major imbalance you get when the foam inevitably bunches up into a ball inside the cavity. What I did do though is switch to an acoustic wool - a much lighter material that adhered better with just high temperature trim fix spray glue - this seemed to last, although was not as effective at supressing the cavity resonance as the 25mm foam strip.

Anyway, it's interesting to see that tyre manufacturers are running into the same problem as I had - no doubt some have got it nailed down with better glues and have far less failures. These goodyear ones seem terrible, with poor quality control on the glue application along with not fully cleaning off the oils from the tire interior surface before applying the glue. Back when i was doing this I found it impossible to glue to goodyear tires as they used a lot of oil in their tire moulds and no matter how much I cleaned the interior surface with chemicals, more oil seemed to seep out of the rubber - preventing good adhesion of the glue.

Michelin look to be better - but you can see a fair few failures reported around the internet with those. My current Model 3 has Pirelli's with the foam - hopefully they have done a better job at gluing the foam down!

 

[TheSlaw]

With regards to the 'echoing hum' - that is the exact reason why the foam is put in the tires.

The foam does nothing to reduce road noise itself- what it does is reduce the cavity resonance. When you bounce a wheel with a tyre on the ground, you hear this 'dong' type noise - do the same with ones with foam in and it's just a dull thud. It is this 'dong' noise that the tyres with foam supress. On the road this noise is a wooing sort of sound, around 220hz usually - any uneven/rough roads will excite the tire and it can get quite loud.

Normally in many vehicles most people don't notice it - but the moment you have a quiet vehicle, such as an EV or you add sound insulation to a car, then this noise can become intrusive. I've always been sensitive to this and its irritated me - so much so i experimented with adding my own foam in a tyre - years before EV's existed (outside of the tesla roadster), or before tire manufacturers started adding it themselves. Every manufacturer is adding the same AB acoustic foam that was the result of research in a scientific paper that I read 10 years ago, and they have obviously followed the experiments from that paper.

After many failed attempts I abandoned adding foam to tires as I never found a glue strong or resilient enough for it to last 10,000 miles - without the foam braking loose and the major imbalance you get when the foam inevitably bunches up into a ball inside the cavity. What I did do though is switch to an acoustic wool - a much lighter material that adhered better with just high temperature trim fix spray glue - this seemed to last, although was not as effective at supressing the cavity resonance as the 25mm foam strip.

Anyway, it's interesting to see that tyre manufacturers are running into the same problem as I had - no doubt some have got it nailed down with better glues and have far less failures. These goodyear ones seem terrible, with poor quality control on the glue application along with not fully cleaning off the oils from the tire interior surface before applying the glue. Back when i was doing this I found it impossible to glue to goodyear tires as they used a lot of oil in their tire moulds and no matter how much I cleaned the interior surface with chemicals, more oil seemed to seep out of the rubber - preventing good adhesion of the glue.

Michelin look to be better - but you can see a fair few failures reported around the internet with those. My current Model 3 has Pirelli's with the foam - hopefully they have done a better job at gluing the foam down!

Absolutely. yes, the goodyears were really slick inside. The foam concept I think is fine but the execution in terms of QC is awful. Proper cleaning and adding some small texture to the inside of the tire mold would be where I would go. Increase surface area for the glue. or random surface orientation (balanced) to avoid the resonance. Dont see it happening for a while, its hard to get anyone to believe its even a problem yet.

 

[EtherMN]

Worthless roadside assistance and service. This happened to me today with my family in the car driving across the country. Smooth drive then all of the sudden vibrations at 57+ mph. Called Tesla and they gave me a a full load of crap about taking my Tesla to Oklahoma when I’m from Minnesota. This was the worst experience since owning my Tesla. Shows their roadside program is complete garbage. Not what I expected buying such an expensive car. Driving home tomorrow at 55mph to drop it off at Tesla.

 

[Forts]

So glad I found this thread! I had the same vibration creep up over the past few months. Get up over 110kph or so and it would vibrate like mad. Had the wheels balanced locally and it seemed to be better. Went on a road trip from Ontario to Pennsylvania and all was great. About 3 hours into the trip we stopped for lunch and when we left... crazy vibration again! I'm definitely going to have the tire pulled now and see if this is the culprit.

 

[ATPMSD]

Normally in many vehicles most people don't notice it - but the moment you have a quiet vehicle, such as an EV or you add sound insulation to a car, then this noise can become intrusive.

When I replaced my tires I went with ones without form. Since I normally listen to the radio, I have not noticed a difference.

 

[goinelectric]

OMG, this just happened to me. I just returned from a long road trip. On the way back home, I developed a strong vibration that only happened at above 68mph. I brought my model 3 in to service, thinking I needed an alignment. They replaced the tire! I didn't even know there was foam inside the tire. I learn something new every day.

 

[r_jay23]

We just had this happen today to our 2023 Model Y. Severe vibration around 65+ happened all of a sudden on one of the front Goodyear tires. Took it to a Tesla service center and they quickly knew the issue about the foam separating. Replaced the tire and problem solved same day.

 

[Pianewman]

We just had this happen today to our 2023 Model Y. Severe vibration around 65+ happened all of a sudden on one of the front Goodyear tires. Took it to a Tesla service center and they quickly knew the issue about the foam separating. Replaced the tire and problem solved same day.

WHY would they replace the tire when all it needed was to re-glue the foam liner? What a waste.

 

[EtherMN]

WHY would they replace the tire when all it needed was to re-glue the foam liner? What a waste.

They won’t reglue it. They actually told me I don’t need it and wanted to take the foam out. I made my service center replace both rear tires because of this. They bitched about it for a bit and ended up doing it.

 

[Pianewman]

Your choice, of course.

Of course, a Service Center would be reluctant to re-glue the foam. They're not a dedicated tire shop. Discount Tire would have done it easily.

Removing the foam, from BOTH tires, would have solved your problem.

 

[W7PP]

Has this happened with any tires other than Goodyear?

 

[Pianewman]

Check the internet. It isn't a common occurrence, but it does happen. It all depends on the QC of the tire manufacturer.

Has this happened [foam separation] with any tires other than Goodyear?