Quote:
Originally Posted by bmrmadness
This is my first entry and need some help.
Since I bought the car (2016 X5 3.0) new it pulls quite a bit during lane changes. I took it back for 2 wheel alignments and the pulling lessened but was still there. I wrote this off to the poor quality OEM tires which only lasted 35k km. Have since changed the summer tires and the new tires still pull.
Changed to my winter tires a few weeks ago and the pulling was so dramatic that I took it in last week for a wheel alignment. It was out of alignment and now has improved significantly but not gone away.
The dealer has also now informed me of a significant likelihood of transfer case failure due to the different sizes of winter tires on the car. My winter tires are 255 50 19 but last year had a tire shop put 2 new 255 55 19 replacement winter tires on the back due to a nail hole. This was the only size they had in stock. I assumed they would work fine.
Checking the tire diameters I now see that the 55 is 1 inch larger in diameter for a 3.4% difference.
Question - is this an acceptable tolerance for the transfer case or do I need to change the tires to make them the same? Is this affecting the handling of the vehicle and the pulling or is the pulling something else.
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Always, always, always have all 4 tires of equal circumference. Any difference (okay, any non-trivial difference) is too much. This is part of what you signed up for when you bought an AWD vehicle. The car wants all 4 wheels to be going the same speed. If that's not happening, the car is going to try to make it happen and will potentially wear out or destroy some of its components in the process of doing so. It could very likely be the source of your pulling.