tuning tires

i'm not one to be satisfied with things not to my liking, and love the challenge of trying to build, fix, or remake things. The new Subaru has pretty noisy tires, as it seems like many cars do, even to luxury ones from posts on the net, and many makes use the same brand and model my car has. It seems no noisier than my other car which is a sedan, and maybe being a wagon it makes it more annoying. I read about adding sound insulation and undercoating and did as much as I could easily, but getting under the carpets which Already has it, will take removing the seats, Which i will be doing whenever I get to installing the seat i bought for it.

I found some seemingly obvious locations where sound can get to the cabin, and stuffed the spaces with Noodles, the 4' long foam tubes kids play with, and that helped a good bit. but when treating one spot, it makes another lesser one more noticable. In reading about tire noise I read about tread design, and found patents to reduce the noise with different tread patterns. Not knowing the terminology, I had to search that, and some things are still hard to understand, but what happens is the tires are sound producers similar to teh way a loudspeaker does And even the curve of the tire forms a horn or megaphone shape with the flat road, The patents describe breaking up the gruves around the tires, making the space short or long which makes them generate different frequencies, as the weight of the car on the tire compress and release the air in the gruves, that makes the sound. Trying to make sense of the random short, medium, and long spaces that should vary to reduce the sound, it is a brain twister.


I used to build horn audio loudspeakers, so it looked like something I used to figure out, but the opposite, since you want speakers to create sound more efficently, and the tires you Don't want that. I often got lucky with the speakers, doing something to fix one problem, and helped it and others. Not being able to understand how to make a quieter tire, I thought, maybe if I just tried something that seemed to make sense to me, I might get lucky. I was going to glue small blocks of rubber in the gruves to try to do what I believe the patents recomend, but didn't want to take the time since I had other pressing things, and didn't want to affect how the tires direct water from under them, so I just started putting lumps of rubber cement in the gruves here and there. I did the 2 front tires, and can't believe how much quieter it got, and I still have the rear tires I can do, and plan to when i rotate the tires, since there isn't much space to get to the tread under the fender.

I am really enjoying each stage of the modding, and am hoping to really reduce the noise. Different road surfaces make different amounts depending on the texture, and today I couldn't tell a difference, which has to mean the sound level is really reduced.

There are a lot of nuts on the net. I have gotten answers to fixing the tire noise from, turn up the stereo, to get new tires. No suggestion on which tires to get, so I guess I was supposed to try brands till I found quieter ones. Tire Rack on line has customer reviews, and noise level is one of the catagories posters can rate, and the same tires can be rated and quieter and noisier, so no telling how loud they might be. Recently a poster on a forum said, the tires are out of alignment. When I told him the last fix I did, modding the tread of 2 of the tires, cut the noise about 50% more than the sound insulation treatments, he said I was wasting my time.(?) He also recomended new tires. That would run about 500$, and I have 15 invested and should solve the problem treating the other 2 tires. I got comments like I was pissing into the wind, so said as long as I can't hear it I don't care.

I had posted the note ina different forum than I should have, and one poster said, he was drunk, so why he was so surly, complaining about where I posted. I asked if the site was being charged for each post, and then recomended he didn't drive while drunk, or he might wind up in a ditch or back of a police cruiser. Funny the comments. One time I posted something in a gerneral discussion forum on the site, and it was like the attack dogs saw blood, and posted some really crazy replies. Some were pretty funny, so I replied in kind.

There are a lot of strange people in this world. A waiter at a diner I started going to again got friendly but likes to tease and kid, but usually putting me down. Told me the tiny radio I listen to with ear buds when there is no one to calk to, Junk. It was 1$ at a $ store, and has real good sound. Told him what I paid, and that fueled his digs. I give them back. Every time I go in he brings something up that he wants to tell you, but doesn't remember details, so leaves you hanging, and asking him each time I go in, it is like he never brought the thing up. When I told him I was going on a diet, he tells Me, his daid used to say a word often, that was old english for older people loosing weight, and not looking well. HE Can't remember the word, and Won't look it up. Reminds me of a friend who would start talking about something and not be able to finish and tell Me, I knew what he meant or was talking about, and would have to try to figure it out. The waiter is critical of snacks I only order, toast and fries, but because I mention diet and nutrition, he comments about me eating white toast not being nutritious. The guy tries to be a know it all, and always wants to be right, and it annoys everyone. he must feel insecure always trying to compete with everyone. At first his style was funny, but then it got old. Recently he was moving and asked me to help him move boxes. I told him I couldn't because my car needs to be fixed, and didn't know when I could. He wants people to do things for him when he doesn't act friendly. He has to learn the hard way, but he isn't a kid.

A Real dirty guy come in, who looks like a streeet person, but he says he lives in an apartment with a roommate. He does strange things with his food. Orders oatmeal or a dananish, and has to have a piece of butter on every mouthful. Gets 2 cups of coffee. One for drinking and the other to dip his danish with butter on it in it. The waiter talks to him, and said he likes him because he is intelligent. It is hilarious, since she doesn't like picking up used tea bags with his hand, worried about bacteria, and grabs them with a napkin, but is friendly with a guy whose clothes are two toned from dirt. I don't know how they let the guy come in the diner.

not finished doctoring all 4 tires the way I did 2, and think I cut the noise they make a lot, and thinking of doing more, different things. It's funny how the laws of physics works. I used to build horn type loudspeakers, and the curved shaps of tires forms a horn with the road, and amplifies the sound the tread makes when contacting the road. It is hard to visualize how a round tire rolling on a road creates sounds, with the chunks of rubber and gruves that make up the tread, and harder than it would be with my brain injury making it harder to visualize in 3D, so I have to piece images in my mind together, but it is hard to hold 2. Having to learn how it all works, and then how to change it is a challenge for anyone, and harder and a bit frustrating for me, but very rewarding when effort pays off. I'll have to take the rear tires off to get to the tread, because they don't turn, and should I try the latest ideas that I think will help more before I find out how far what I did to the front tires will get me? I should wait but am eager to find out. It takes me SO long to do things, and I have a ton of other stuff I have to do, and limited energy, that it gets frustating and takes time when i should be doing other things.