Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Wheels & Tires Noisy Continental ContiExtremes?

After three sets of KDWs, the last of which only lasted 14K miles, I decided to make the change to Continental ContiExtremes in the stock 205/55/16 size on my E0 CSVT. For the first week, the tires were much quieter than than the KDWs (of course), but in the following weeks, the tires have begun to develop what best can be described as a "soft howl" that occurs all the time, especially at speed. If I turn the wheel ever so slightly in either direction from dead center while cruising on the freeway at 65 MPH, the howl gets noticeably louder. This occurs on any kind of pavement: concrete, asphalt, whether new or old.

My question is: is this simply a characteristic of the tire (Tire Rack's ratings indicate that these are relatively quiet tires), or are they defective in some way? The performance is certainly adequate for everyday driving, as I haven't noticed a demonstrable difference in grip between the Continentals and the KDWs, but then again, I don't autocross the car.

Anyone have a set of Continentals on their cars and experience the same thing?

Lee K

How many miles do you have on the tires, and have you rotated them lately?
Check the air pressure if you haven't already.
Most tire shops don't put the correct air pressure in your tires,
and that's something that's our responsibility to check.

Out of habit, I do my first rotation at 5,000 miles and then every 7,500 after that.

Pete,

The tires have about 500 miles on them at the moment. I'm considering rotating them anyway to see if the noise continues with the set currently on the rear. The noise appears to be coming only from the front tires. You're right about air pressure -- it was low when they originally mounted the tires -- so I fixed that in the first week of ownership.

The problem seems to be getting progressively worse, so I'm starting to believe that I may be dealing with defective tires. This would be a pain, as I ordered them from Tire Rack and don't have the usual complaint process that I would if I had bought them locally. Oh well -- it's the first time it's ever happened to me.

Lee K

98 E0 SVT, Silver

The Tire Rack does have pretty good customer service, all their tires have a 30 day test drive. Go to their site, get their # and look for Luke.

I have about 6000 miles on mine. I havent noticed the "howl" that you describe happening on mine. They seem to be pretty quiet. I think you may have defective tires. I also havent rotated them yet. I guess I will need to do that pretty soon. . .

Hope everything works out for you.

Update:

Rotated the tires this evening to see if the howl goes away by moving the rears to the front. Checked to see if really dumb things weren't present, like maybe the tires were mounted by the store against the proper rolling direction. Everything looked fine there. Also made sure that air pressure was correct. It didn't look like any of the wheel weights were thrown off, which was another one of my theories for the cause. Pressure was fairly low (around 25 PSI, even though I topped it off just two weeks ago), so I had great hopes that the howl was going to go away. A quick spin around the neighborhood was disappointing. The low howl is still there.

I can't imagine that that I've got four bad tires, so I'm at a loss as to what is causing the problem. It's not so bad as to be unacceptably loud, but definitely there all the time, and it gets worse on slight turns, combined with a slight vibration felt in the foot pedals. It sounds to me like its coming from the front and being caused by the edges of the front tires reaching a harmonic frequency with the road.

Since my last set of KDWs lasted only 14K with the inner edge totally worn away, I'm beginning to suspect that maybe my problems are not with the tires, but are suspension-related. The car was four-wheel aligned by the dealer with the mounting of the Continentals, but I've wondered if I have worn tie-rods. Under acceleration, bad tie rods could lead to toe-out and worn inner edges. I wonder if this could be the cause of the noise I'm hearing on new tires that are supposed to be relatively quiet.

Lee K

Find a place that road forces tires. That might fix it.

Lee, sounds like you have a wheel bearing going south on you. Wheel bearings are perennial problem children for Contours and Cougars - sometimes it seems that the most you can expect is only 50-60 kmiles. The symptoms of a 'bad' wheel bearing are what you described - the howl, a gradual increase in noise over time, the noise disappearing with a slight turn of the steering wheel, etc.

Thanks, Kurt!

I think you may be onto something there. My bone stock 98 CSVT has 86K on it. The wheel bearing may indeed be the source of the sound and the reason my tires get chewed up prematurely. I'll have it checked out.

Lee K

I've got over 100,000 miles on my SE Sport
and I've yet to have a Wheel Bearing problem...

I've had all sorts of other problems though...