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My back tires on my 2009 Vibe are cupping in the middle of the tire all the way around the tire. My uncle says he has seen it before on other cars and it points to strut damage. Is this correct and has anyone else seen this? BTW. my car has 55K miles.

Mine are feathering on the back with about 30000kms on the tires. I expected to see this on the front but the fronts are in good shape, worn more but nothing unusual. Maybe I'll rotate them, see if a month on the front evens the wear out.

My last set of tires weren't balance properly and they cupped. I guess I shouldn't have bought them from Wallmart. The cupping also caused a slight vibration in the steering wheel. I drove on those tires until I felt I got my money's worth and replaced them at a Firestone dealership. Problem solved.

okay then that what ill do as well. Ill buy a new set of fronts and rotate those to the back

Heavy feathering on the right rear, not quite so much on the left rear. The fronts are worn pretty much even.Right rearLeft rearLeft frontRight frontI'll replace these for next year.

That's what I did

Hmmm. Toyotas have a habit of doing this to tires? You shouldn't have to replace tires before you hit the wear bars. Not getting money's worth. I don't have enough miles on the Vibe to see any bad wear, but wife's Toyota has chewed through a couple of sets. Rear tire wear, too. Front's are fine. If you rotate these, you'll end up with a full set of noisy lumpy tires all around. At first I thought it was poor balancing. Not so, perfect balance when checked. Have had Toyota look at the alignment, and they did a little work on the rear alignment (shimmed it, too) but it didn't help. I have a third set of noisy rear tires again. Not a happy thing.

They were noisy on the back.... now they're noisy on the front....But winter will be here soon and then I'll have reaaaaaly noisy tires!!!

Bad struts, not rotated enough, over inflation and bad rear wheel alignment could cause that. My 05 AWD did the same thing but once I replaced the tires and rotated every 5K miles havn't had a problem since. Oh yea mine were so bad the TPS would come on even when the tires were at the right pressure.

Quote, originally posted by Salsa Guy »not rotated enough or ever ,bad rear wheel alignment could cause that need to check this at some point.

If the tire feather too much means one tire is counter acting the direction forward motion. I might give the wheel bearing too much thrust load and over heat the wheel bearing..you might need to buy a new sets of hub rings the same time you change your tires?

I'll have a look at new hub rings next year when they go back on. The wheel bearings I"ll check when I put the winters on.

No one has yet suggested that some tires are prone to cupping. The Mazda5 series have this problem w/the factory installed tires. Some claim that after replacing them w/another brand the wear goes away.But in general, I agree, have the rear alignment checked. If there is more than say 1* neg camber or more importantly, if the toe is not at zero, that could be the problem right there.Bad toe-in usually causes cupping on a non-driven axle. 4WD/AWD's are another matter.