20" Wheels - excessive road noise

[gaby]

Originally Posted by Quacker

Surprisingly refined in all areas of noise and comfort is the current Nissan Qashqai.

I assume the Nissan isn't shod with (very) wide tyres?

[Driver Dave]

Originally Posted by Quacker

Volvo are very far from being alone with issues of tyre noise in otherwise very refined big cars. Several other car brands use tyres with similar technology to Contisilent on their top end models now in order to try and lessen this issue. I know that Pirelli and Michelin have such tyres, many designed specifically for perticular models of cars or at least for particular car brands.

The more you think about this issue, the worse you perceive the issue to be with your own car, I'm fairly sure. My XC90 is no worse in this respect than my CRV, Both of which have less tyre noise than my previous Q7 and Range Rover. The Volvo is the equal quietest, along with the Q7 for noise other than tyres.

Surprisingly refined in all areas of noise and comfort is the current Nissan Qashqai. I like driving that as much as any other car and the revised model will have most of Volvo's active safety features available at half the price. Which proves to me that money isn't everything. People with more affordable value cars can be equally proud of their cars which give nine tenths of what prestige models provide for a fraction of the cost.

So which make, and size of tyre are these other vehicles running on. It may be the combination of suspension components and tyres that makes a vehicle more or less noisy than others.

Those of us that have/ have had, XC90S that are/were noisy have made our comments to our Dealers and Volvo with varying degrees of success in getting the problem resolved to greater or lesser extents.

My car is certainly much less noisy since the Contisilent tyres were fitted. It may be quieter again with tyres from a different manufacturer but Volvo would only supply tyres from Continental as they are Volvo's tyre partner.

I could have fitted tyres from another manufacturer but that would have been entirely at my own cost and with no guarantee of reduction in the road noise.

By accepting Volvo's choice if there had not been a significant reduction in noise I would have been able to continue fighting to get some other resolution from them.

There is a further reduction by altering the wheel / tyre combination, my 18" Winter set are considerably less noisy than the 20", this is really only to be expected as there is less of the tyre in contact with the road.

As both neon and I have said in previous posts perhaps if those of us with noisy vehicles had just accepted them then thee may not have been the impovements that Volvo gave us and we would all be driving round in XC90s with sound systems turned up to the max or wearing ear plugs/defenders to blank out the road noise.

[Quacker]

Originally Posted by gaby

I assume the Nissan isn't shod with (very) wide tyres?

225/65r18. Michelin something or other 3 at the front and Continentals on the back, which are fitted in a different size to Volvo.
So, no, not very wide but only slightly smaller than the 19" tyres Volvo fit.

[Quacker]

Originally Posted by Driver Dave

So which make, and size of tyre are these other vehicles running on. It may be the combination of suspension components and tyres that makes a vehicle more or less noisy than others.

Those of us that have/ have had, XC90S that are/were noisy have made our comments to our Dealers and Volvo with varying degrees of success in getting the problem resolved to greater or lesser extents.

My car is certainly much less noisy since the Contisilent tyres were fitted. It may be quieter again with tyres from a different manufacturer but Volvo would only supply tyres from Continental as they are Volvo's tyre partner.

I could have fitted tyres from another manufacturer but that would have been entirely at my own cost and with no guarantee of reduction in the road noise.

By accepting Volvo's choice if there had not been a significant reduction in noise I would have been able to continue fighting to get some other resolution from them.

There is a further reduction by altering the wheel / tyre combination, my 18" Winter set are considerably less noisy than the 20", this is really only to be expected as there is less of the tyre in contact with the road.

As both neon and I have said in previous posts perhaps if those of us with noisy vehicles had just accepted them then thee may not have been the impovements that Volvo gave us and we would all be driving round in XC90s with sound systems turned up to the max or wearing ear plugs/defenders to blank out the road noise.

I've fitted a wide variety of brands and patterns of tyres to various cars over the years. The bigger and wider they are, the more noise they make. SUV's without separate chassis have more tyre noise inside than those with chassis.
Many cars and many tyre models were considerably noisier as the tyres wore down compared to with new tyres. Both the Range Rover and Audi Q7 were examples that became hideously noisy as the tyres wore. At one point, on the original Goodyear tyres fitted to the Range Rover, I managed to convince myself that the transmission was about to blow up, it was so noisy on some roads. The Audi was similar but far worse on hard wearing Maxxus and other Korean tyres as they wore. The Koreans lated twice as long as premium tyres, 20,000 miles instead of 10,000, but I spend the last 10,000 miles hoping they would soon wear out, because they were so noisy.

As yet the Volvo is heaven in comparison. Its only done some 6000 miles, and the tyres don't appear to have worn much at all yet, so there's not enough experience to draw a safe long term comparison.

[gaby]

Originally Posted by Quacker

I've fitted a wide variety of brands and patterns of tyres to various cars over the years. The bigger and wider they are, the more noise they make.

Voilà, not much more to it!

[nu11eaf]

Originally Posted by Quacker

225/65r18. Michelin something or other 3 at the front and Continentals on the back, which are fitted in a different size to Volvo.
So, no, not very wide but only slightly smaller than the 19" tyres Volvo fit.

I would have liked 235/65/18 wheels/tyres on my inscription the same as I had on my 3 MK 1 XC90's but they only give you an option to increase wheel size not reduce the size. I think the car would be so much quieter with them.

[Quacker]

Originally Posted by gaby

Voilà, not much more to it!

There's a bit more to it, because different tyres make more or less noise and Volvo's with bigger wheels, the 21 and 22" ones, seem, on the face of it, to suffer less cabin noise than those with 20".
Not sure whether that is for certain or whether it is just a theory though. There could be something about the sidewall height and internal tyre volume nature that makes the 20" tyres resonate and transmit noise through the wheel spokes and into the car body that is absent from tyres and wheels of a different dimension. Nobody really knows and if they do, they aren't telling.

[Bicax]

I'm not quite sure how to approach this. From everything I've read, the only certainty seems to be that older cars were noisier than newer ones (same person trying both cars back to back).

But there are so many variables (different people have a different perception of noise, certain roads are noisier than others, we all drive at different speeds, some people are more sensitive to certain frequencies, etc.) that unless two people, one with a supposedly noisy car and another with a supposedly silent car, start taking dB readings with the same machine on the same road, it's going to be difficult to reach a conclusion...

Any volunteers? I would gladly do it, but my car isn't due before October.

[gaby]

Originally Posted by nu11eaf

I would have liked 235/65/18 wheels/tyres on my inscription the same as I had on my 3 MK 1 XC90's but they only give you an option to increase wheel size not reduce the size. I think the car would be so much quieter with them.

Isn't it possible in the UK to start from a lower level trim with smaller wheels/tyres, building the car to the
specs you like from there? Since the Inscription trim has some features I don't want/like, that's what I did.
But I am in Belgium, perhaps this is not possible in (some) other markets.

[nu11eaf]

Originally Posted by gaby

Isn't it possible in the UK to start from a lower level trim with smaller wheels/tyres, building the car to the
specs you like from there? Since the Inscription trim has some features I don't want/like, that's what I did.
But I am in Belgium, perhaps this is not possible in (some) other markets.

No smaller wheels were not on the option list for the inscription., you could buy a second set of smaller 19" wheels but not have them instead of 20" wheels but you could get larger wheels as an extra cost option fitted. And 18" wheels were not even in the sales brochure for the new XC90 when I bought mine.