02 Elantra Spark Plugs

I'd say start a post on the cupping problem.... I've never met an Elantra owner that DIDN'T have a problem with it. The dealers apparently all have a consensus that it's because the tires aren't rotated often enough... Put

95000 miles on a set of MX4s on my Saturn with ONE rotation.... Running about 1000 to 1500 miles a week as a consultant...

The Michellins were ruined in less than 40K on the Elantra... but I kept them rotated. The dealers insist it is properly aligned. Insist there is no problem. I started having problems and found this group and had A LOT of company...... start a post with a title like "Michellin Tire cupping on Elantra".... you'll be amazed at the responses you get. You must be new here, right?

Thanks for all the great answers, but maybe you really should get some info first...

Yeah, yeah.... :-) Actually, I've pretty much resigned myself to the car eating tires.... but until this plug problem, it really has been pretty good to me, but my bike is becoming more my main transportation now.... more hp and only 500 lbs. Of course, maintenance will kill ya on a decent sport bike unless you do it all yourself... tires are only good for about 5K.... but it's SO much more fun to ride.... waterproof riding suits help.

By the way, the local parts store would be delighted to "special order" some NGK plugs for me... fortunately, they did have some Bosch plugs... they're working fine...

I've been here for over a year and don't recall seeing anything about tire cupping in that time. I haven't seen anything on other Elantra sites, either. People do complain about wearing the Michelins out quickly, but that's all I've seen.

What are you running for tire pressures? The recommended front tire pressure (30 psi) is way too low for the load they handle. The general consensus seems to be that running the tires at ~36/32 front/rear is the way to go. It improves the handling substantially and results in much more even tire wear. Installing a Tiburon rear sway bar dramatically improves the handling with much flatter cornering and also helps to even out the tire wear.

So far, I've seen no evidence of cupping on my Michelins, but I've only got ~12-14K miles on them. They get rotated once a year when I take the snow tires/wheels off in the spring and put the stock wheels and tires back on. I'm on my second summer with them now.

That's good to hear. I was somewhat skeptical of the reports I've heard about problems with Bosch plugs in the Elantra.

Apparently the Autolites are a mismatch. Perhaps they just don't make the exact plug needed for the Elantra and tried to substitute something "close". I guess it's not close enough.

Ditto. Never heard of cupping problems and been reading this group since Jan 04. Going to have my GT serviced in the next few weeks, and will ask about cupping/even wear at that time. I've had my GT since Jan 04, and have around 22k miles on it. IIRC the tires have been rotated twice, and as of the last inspection were wearing fairly evenly.

No cupping problems here after 26k miles on my wife's 01 Elantra GLS. I recently swapped out the MXV4 Michelins for a set of Kumho ECSTA HP4

716s mainly because the Michelins were dreadful in the wet. The Kumhos are much better than the Michelins, especially in the wet, plus they're much quieter on the highway.

FWIW, I rotate the tires every 5k miles and I end up getting a 4 wheel alignment about every 10-12k miles mostly because the roads here in metro Boston are in such bad shape.

If you take the car into the dealer, they should be able to put it back into spec so that it'll cup the tires. They might even do it under warranty. :-) I just casually mentioned the tire problem. I'm really not looking for any help there, but thanks anyway. To me it's like an old British motorcycle.... you just learn to live with the oil leaks.

If you haven't heard about the cupping problem, then I guess you might just not have been paying close attention... or it just wasn't a concern to you.... The claim was often that it was an "inherent" problem with independent rear suspension systems. Hence, I don't rely too much on "concensus" opinions... It's all physics. I can deal with that... Give them another 5 to 10 thousand miles and pay close attention.... the vibration will slowly creep in, and when it does, it's really too late. You can run

32, 34 psi in the tires... whatever... it really won't matter. You should start to notice it first under braking. Watch closely on the inside edges. That's where the flat spots will start...

Could be..... I was hoping somebody could confirm that.... Then again, I could be the only guy that ever got garbage plugs like that... COULD happen... Still, I don't like spending money at Wally World anyway, and I certainly don't like just donating it to them.... I was just looking for some concrete info as to what might be the issue. Just may not be enough of a problem to show itself much.

I've been here since about late 02... Maybe you guys just came in too late. Once I hit about 30 to 35K miles on the Michellins, I started noticing the vibrations..... by then, it was too late to save em... I just drove the massage machine until I got tired of it, and then bought better rain tires that were 1/2 the price of the MX4s. The misconception, though, is that these tires wear out quickly and are poorly made. Unfortunately, that's just simply not true. They hydroplane on water and don't stick to wet pavement worth a darn, but they stick like razors on the dry stuff.

On other small cars you can expect 90,000+ miles. I got that out of one set on a Saturn SL2, even when I was racing back and forth from Knoxville TN to Chillicothe OH and back every weekend. I could go door to door in under 4 hours. That's 326 miles per MSN Maps..... about 1/3 of the trip is tight, twisty 2-lane backroads ... that might give you an idea of how hard I ran those tires..... They started to drift rather predictably, so it was easy to push them to the edge, and the speed limiter on the Saturn kicked in at

117.... Over 1/2 of the 90,000 miles I got out of that set was at high speed and hard cornering... They DO last a long time... just not on an Elantra. It's not the tires that are the problem.

I've been lurking here, trying to get anecdotal information regarding the Elantra, since before we bought the 2001 GLS. Yours is the first post I've seen referring to cupping.

A google search of alt.autos.hyundai shows that you are the only one who has complained of this problem.

Also, I researched the entire Elantra archive at hyundau-forums.com and there are exactly zero references to this problem.

Well, ok, but I was pretty involved in some of the threads... that was about the time my vibration started... I'm not making it up... swear... you guys can tell me it's not so..... but I was young in the 60s.... don't think it was a flashback.....

I don't think anyone here is disputing that you had problems with your tires cupping. It would be pretty stupid to argue that. The issue is whether it's a common problem, possibly caused by a design flaw. The lack of other cupping complaints indicates that's probably not the case.

There is one way to find out. Try swapping in one Autolite at a time to see if the engine misfires. You may find that you have one bad plug.

True... since you weren't involved in the other problems, they didn't exist. Must be those drugs I didn't do in the 60's that makes me remember the people that I didn't discuss it with that obviously didn't have the problem.... I work with two people with the same problem, and discussed it with a number of others here. I'm sorry, next time we'll make sure we hunt you down ....

Whatever you do, always assume that you're ignorance of information is proof that it doesn't exist...

Have a nice day... I have better things to do than waste my time trying to explain these things to a self-proclaimed orb of knowledge...

If you will notice my FIRST post... I did that. The answer to my question (not yours) is that you guys don't have any knowledge of a systemic problem here..... I'm done here....

If there was a thread about Elantra tire problems in this newsgroup a Google search would have revealed it. But it didn't because there was none. If the alleged design flaw was as widespread as you claim it would have had at least *some* mention at hyundai-forums.com. But it did not.

Oh, come on, Brian didn't say anything out of line. If you could substantiate what you claim there would be no problem. I did my Google search not to discredit you but to find out to what degree the problem actually exists because I don't want my wife driving a fundamentally flawed vehicle back and forth to work.

As I said before, I could not find anything in the archives of this newsgroup or at hyundai-forums.com referring to abnormal tire wear on any Hyundai.

Sorry you couldn't find it. It's been a while. I'm sure the archived have been purged since then.... most NGs only keep archives for a year or 2.... it's been 3. You also said (I believe) that you only had about 20K? on the tires. I'd like to see a progress post at 40K if you would. Tires that go

90K miles without a hitch on other cars, but only 1/2 that on a Hyundai does not indicate a bad tire.... hence, sounds like a car problem. I'm sure Tina will be really excited to hear that she really didn't have the flat spots on her tires at 35K, and that she really didn't have to replace the tires.

So I take it you didn't see the initial post either. Brian kept trying to answer a different question that I asked, and when I repeatedly noted that my question was regarding information on Autolites and bad plugs... etc.... In my first or second post, I said that I had put the new plugs in, it didn't run... old ones back in, it ran. replaced one at a time with the Autolites, it backfired / sputtered after only two.... used two different autolites, same result. It took umteen dozen posts of him telling me what plugs to buy and where to get them.... (WRONG QUESTION)... and even after repeatedly noting that I was well aware of how to make the car right and noting that I was perfectly aware that NGK made new plugs, he refused to accept that the answer to the only question he seemed to know was some how.... the answer to the wrong question. However, he managed to tap his intellectual power to finally suggest that I do what I said I did right up front...

By the way, when I went to get plugs, I believe you mentioned Bosch plugs, and when I saw they were available, I went with them.... of course, that's after NGK was a "special order" and NDs weren't even on the list. You got in late, and with Brian trying to sell me plugs, I'm sure that's what you would have thought it was about. It wasn't. I appreciate you trying to help. However, if you ask what the torque specs are on the head bolt for the Hyundai, and I took off on a tear insisting that you buy XYZ head gasket over and over.... arguing with anything you say until you realized that you don't know what your questions is...... would that eventually become irritating? As I told Brian several times.... I guess then the answer to my question is "No, you don't know of any systemic problems with the autolite plugs"..... (that's not a quote from a previous post... but if you look you'll see it). I was fine with that, but he seemed to be determined that somehow I was going to learn something from his limitless inventory of irrelevant knowledge...

It's pretty rare that a NG keeps archives for more than a couple years. I'm sure by now that those issues have been purged. Since I couldn't get any reasonable answers to my questions, I dropped out of the NG for quite a while. I'm sure a lot of others got frustrated as well and bugged out, looking for a better source.

I'm not surprised, (see above re: archiving) but you weren't there. Brian (according to his first comment) wasn't there either. Of course, after I noted the time frame that I got the info, Brian went back in time and added another year to his time on the NG. Convenient... However, as I also noted in a previous post.... I DON'T NEED HELP ON THE TIRE ISSUE. It's the way it is, and if I find a solution, then I'll be glad to share... of course since it's really not a problem, then maybe I won't. However, I greatly appreciate you two going to such great extremes to let me know that the money spent and experiences I've had were really just trips to the twilight zone.

It appears from your posts that you are trying to help, and I appreciate that. I only mentioned the tire issue in passing, thinking since there HAD been so much info flying around a few years ago that it was fairly common knowledge. Brian's tires hadn't cupped either... of course, he doen't have many miles on them either, or is he the one that replaced them at 10K?? hmmm... You are at least trying to only provide info that you can back up, and I appreciate it.

As I may have implied before, I haven't posted to this NG in quite a while. This is probably my first post in over a year. As I recall from before, we had a good group of people that really were trying to help each other resolve issues, share info, etc. I miss that. Hyundaitech is a really good source of info, and adds a lot to the group. However, I guess I'll just have to ignore the bogus posts from now on if I resort to asking a question again, but right now that looks like an unlikely scenario.

Soap box back in the closet.... pressure vented to atmospheric..... Blue Flash exits the NG in search of a better source of info....

I believe that Google archive all postings and don't purge. Perhaps if you'd take the time to provide evidence of the tire issues rather than rant at people who say they can't find any evidence, you'd live a little longer.