[T3] My old Michelin tires

["Jim Adney" <jadney@vwtype3.org>]

For the past few months I have been disturbed by the feeling that I 
had a "lumpy" tire somewhere on my squareback. Even on the smooŽD+oads, at low speed I could feel the car being rocked once per wheel 
revolution, and at high speeds, this turned into a rather annoying 
vibration that seemed to be coupled with a lack of directional 
stability that was not normal.

I was concerned that one of my Michelin XZX 165SR15s might have 
developed a defect.

Last weekend I finally jacked up the RR wheel, where the effect 
seemed to be coming from, and spun that tire by hand as I watched it 
for bumps, lumps, or squirming of the tread. There were none of 
those, but I did notice that I had actually worn that tire down to 
the steel belt in 2 places. So I threw on the spare to see if the 
lumpiness also went away; it did.

At first I was annoyed. I thought this was a rather new tire and that 
I had gotten only about 50k miles out of it, Later however, I 
realized that this was the second car this tire (and its LR mate) had 
been on, and that I had actually gotten about 150k miles out of them. 
The date code on those tires was from 1981.

Yesterday, I had the worn out tire removed and replaced with the last 
of 4 new XZXs that I bought in 93, when I was concerned that those 
tires might be getting hard to come by. Now both rear tires are "new" 
from that batch (one had been my spare, and the remaining 1981 tire 
is now my spare.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that my only complaint about 
these tires is that they last so long that it is hard to keep track 
of how many miles you actually get out of them. 18 years, 150k+ 
miles, not a bad showing.

Jim
 
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Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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