saholz

A couple of years ago I bought a set of Dunlop Winter Sport snow tires for my 2009 A4. I had them mounted on my OEM wheels with no issues. Last year I bought new wheels for them, and had them mounted on those. I developed a very slight shimmy, but not bad enough to bother with.

This season, when I brought my tires in for mounting, my local mechanic noticed that they were mounted incorrectly. The Dunlops are directional, and they were not on right. (He did not do the original mounting.) He corrected the problem and I now have severe shaking coming from the tires, even though they balanced perfectly three times. Next week, we're going to start swapping out the tires one at a time to see if we can isolate the tire/tires that are causing the problem.

Here's my confusion. I've now taken this into two different shops, and both mechanics claim that running these tires the wrong way can damage the belts. They feel that one winter of driving with the tires mounted the wrong way is enough to cause belt damage. I've also spoken to Tire Rack, where I originally bought the tires, and they say that there's no way driving a few thousand miles like that would damage anything. Performance would be compromised, but no damage should have occured. That doesn't help with the problem of why at least one tire now can't be mounted without generating a severe shimmy.

Has anyone seen similar problems with directional snow tires? This is driving me nuts. I'd hate to have to buy new tires, especially since this set still looks new and has maybe 5,000 miles on them.

SimpsonTide985

Sorry if this is off-topic, but I think your A4 in your signature looks REALLY good..and I'm not even a fan of Ice Silver! hah.