Car Wheel

[Norphy]

Bit of an odd one this, hoping someone might be able to explain this.

 

Around here is the land of the pothole. However bad you think it is where you are, I can almost guarantee that here, it's worse. I live on a single-track lane, about three miles long with all of about 10 houses along it, eight of which are probably farmhouses so what traffic that does go up here is more than likely a tractor. The road is in a shocking state and the local council don't give a monkey's because barely anyone uses the road.

 

Anyway, the other day I hit one of those interminable potholes with my passenger side front wheel and got a flat tyre. No problem. Swapped it with my spare which happens to be the same kind of alloy wheel as what's on the rest of the car. Makes more sense as far as I'm concerned, there's enough space for it in the spare wheel bay so why bother with a steely. ANYWAY.

 

The tyre that was on the spare was new, hadn't been used and was only about a month old because I get through so many tyres, so I fitted it and went carried with my evening. I went to the garage the next day and got the tyre replaced on what's now the spare. Today I decided to swap the driver side front wheel with the spare, so that the front of the car could have two new tyres of the same kind, instead of the cheap and nasty thing that got put onto the driver side front because I was desperate at the time. Made sense to me at the time, anyway. I did that this morning and left it.

 

I went out this afternoon to pick my partner up from work and all the way there, there was a sort of scraping/rubbing sound coming from the wheel well where I'd changed the wheel that morning. Eventually the car's TPMS triggered, reporting a loss in tyre pressure despite the tyres all being OK. The only thing that had changed was me changing the wheel, so I pulled into a cafe's car park and while my partner got lunch, I changed the wheel back. Hey presto, no more scraping/rubbing sound.

 

So, what happened? Did I do something wrong? Is the wheel bent? Did I not torque the wheel nuts correctly? The car is going in for a service in about 10 days' time, so I'll ask about it then.

[3s-gtech]

TPMS is usually triggered by the ABS (unless you have actual pressure monitoring which isn't that common yet). So if something rubs it can set off the TPMS. Also, if something has damaged the ABS ring it can do the same.

 

Are the wheels all the same size and width? Brake caliper not rubbing on the back of the wheel (which can happen if it's bent)?

[psynegy]

Did they put the wrong size tyre on? Only other thing I can think is that they put the balancing weight on in a place that interferes with the brake disk cover... It should be fairly obvious if that is the case as there will be a nice shiny metal line across the balancing weight on the inside of the rim.

[Norphy]

Wheels are all identical. The wheel that was making the noise was on the other side of the car until I hit the pothole the other day. They also put the right size tyre on it (205/55 R16).

 

I'll check the balancing weights, but I don't recall seeing any lines on them when I swapped the wheel over.