# highway noise question



## brur (Nov 15, 2018)

I get a wah wah noise at highway speeds. I thought it might be tire wear issue. As most of my driving is in town, a different aspect for the tires to encounter.
Before seeing a service center thought I'd ask the smart people here. I have a dual motor 3. any thoughts, same experiences?
I'm guessing it is around a half-second interval.


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

That noise could mean at least one tire is out of balance or out of round.

If you had a recent strong impact with a curb, there's a small chance one of the half-axles is bent, but those are hardened steel, so it's unlikely. Curb impact or severe pothole impact can also bend wheels.

Don't go to the Tesla Service Center for a simple balance, any decent tire place can balance the wheels. The SC will punish you with an insane price for balancing, because they don't really want to do it. If you have wheel or half-axle damage, that's when you'd need the service center.


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## potatoee (Aug 26, 2018)

I'm not sure how to picture "wah wah" but I will say that it's certainly easy to imagine a "gravely" sound (sounds like driving on gravel) due to scalloping of the tires.

My Dual Motor M3 started to show this around 18-20k miles. I recently put on a set of winter tires (don't ask me why I only got them on in January). With this new set of tires that symptom has pretty much gone away.


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## Frully (Aug 30, 2018)

Is your tire wear even? If left/right or front/back wear balance is off, you could be encountering a harmonic node where the wheel noise interferes constructively at your 2-second interval. At highway speeds it would only need a fraction of an inch difference to create different rotational speeds.


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## brur (Nov 15, 2018)

I think the tires are the issue. A tire guy said there was cupping on one tire. Which might be alignment or whatever, apparently it is hard to diagnose. 
I've been very lax on rotating tires. The rears are just good enough, while the fronts are not showing much wear. 17K easy miles.


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## potatoee (Aug 26, 2018)

brur said:


> I think the tires are the issue. A tire guy said there was cupping on one tire. Which might be alignment or whatever, apparently it is hard to diagnose.
> I've been very lax on rotating tires. The rears are just good enough, while the fronts are not showing much wear. 17K easy miles.


Sounds like you're on the right track. I was surprised the first time I experienced it. Never thought a scalloping on a tire which is barely visible could masquerade as driving on a rough road or some other problem. It made sense once I thought about it.


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