Tire question

Define "not be visible." A broken or damaged belt is going to cause SOME distortion of the tire, but it can be very, very hard to see, especially without taking the tire off the car and examining it slowly and carefully. Or it can be bad enough to see at a glance, just depends on which belt and where it breaks. But you are correct, it won't necessarily affect balance at all.

thanks for the replies. the problem I've got is that there is a shimmy in the van between 15-35 mph. I had the tires rebalanced and rotated. Problem still there. The tire place checked the front end and could not find anything. I took it to my mechanic and he checked it and drove it and said it feels like a broken belt in the rear. You can feel the shimmy in your seat. so I go back to the tire place and they say it is not the tires. They balanced them with a machine that has a roller against the tire and said that if it wobbled, the computer would have picked it up. And they said if it was a belt, the shimmy should be there all the time and you would see a bulge where the belt is broken. So, I don't know where to go next. I'm going to try to put the spare on each side of the rear and test drive it and see if the problem goes away. Don't know what else to do. Mechanic says tire, tire man says no.

thanks aga>

That actually sounds like a pretty good approach to take. I think you'll rule out tires as a problem with this, then you can move on to (re)checking the suspension components (with a different mechanic).

--Geoff

Having over 30 years in the tire business try first to rotate front to rear the wobble should move. Next rotate the l/f to the l/r see it that helps or isolates the problem you should be abe to figure out which tire it is. How old are these tires?

More likely you will CONFIRM the tire problem. Then you can find a different tire dealer.