Bump Shimmy Bump

For a while, I'd noticed that my Accord had a bit of a shimmy at certain speeds, and while braking. I always figured something was a little unbalanced wheel-wise. Well, the last day or so, it had a pretty serious shimmy, and the wheel that shimmied before felt like it was going bump bump... almost like a flat, except it wasn't.

This afternoon, I decided that something must be stuck to the wheel, or something like that, so I put the car in neutral and pushed it along until I found... a point on the wheel where the outside was "flat" and the inside of the wheel was bulging like it might pop at any moment. Uh-oh! Things were so worn down the sidewall had big cracks in it and wires from the radial belt were sticking out of the rubber.

Long story short, I manged to limp the car to a few places and wound up going to the local Goodyear place to get a pair of Dunlop SP20FE's put on the front of the car (balanced, of course). It's sooooo much nicer now. I can't wait to get it out on the highway.

So the lesson for today is to not ignore tires that shimmy.