QuestionI have a 2000 ford explorer and I put brand new Firestone Destination LE owl tires on my explorer on 02212009. On the door of my car it say put p235 75/r15sl, what does the sl mean. I am hearing a noise that I thought were the bearing going bad, so I took my explorer to 2 separate shops and both shops stated that my bearing were good, and that the tires are bad. I have put 16,358 on 60,000 mile limited warranty tires. Please what do you think I should do please recommend a tire please.
AnswerJoseph,
SL means Standard Load - and even if you used XL (Extra Load), that would have nothing to do with your problem.
I suspect you have irregular wear, which comes out as a noise or a vibration (same thing, just different frequencies. Irregular wear is caused by misalignment and aggravated by insufficient inflation pressure and insufficient rotation practices.
So you need to get an alignment.
My experience says that the published alignment tolerances are too wide. Not the target value, but the allowable deviation from that value. I think it ought to be half of what is published.
Put another way, the alignment should be within the inner half of the spec.
You should be aware that even vehicles that do not have a pull can be out of alignment. There are settings where one out of spec condition is offset by another out of spec condition – typically camber vs toe.
While an alignment will solve the source of the irregular wear, it doesn't fix the tires. Hopefully rotating the tires will allow the tires to develop a new wear pattern typical for the new position. but sometimes the irregular wear is so bad that the old wear pattern isn't completely erased. In that case, the only fix is replacing the tires.
A tire recommendation? I'm sorry. I work for a major manufacturer of tires and shouldn’t make brand specific comments. But your problem isn't the tires. Any tire will develop irregular wear if the alignment is bad.
