Gradually, though, it started to be accompanied by a vibration. You could feel it even at very low speeds, but it seemed to go away around 25 mph, and wouldn't come back until highway speeds.
Then yesterday I drove SC to the airport and it was pretty bad up at 65 mph. I hadn't driven the car in a while, so I couldn't tell if this was much worse than what it used to be. It'd also pull to the right (indicative of higher drag on the right wheel), which I didn't remember it doing before. On the way back, it was decidedly worse than it had ever been before: at a walking pace I heard and felt a periodic thumping, and at higher speeds it became a vibration. At medium speeds I guess the suspension took care of it.
When I parked, I took a look at the tire, and pretty luckily, the damage was on the part of the tire facing up, in plain view. It looked like a part of the tread was dented in. What?
To cut to the end of the story, it turns out these tires are 14 years old, the tread had separated (we're very lucky it didn't do so catastrophically), and I was looking at a bulge (from the side I was viewing it initially, it was hard to tell whether one part was abnormally high or whether another part was abnormally low) where it was hemorrhaged out (the steel belts had broken). Also spent 10 min. pumping up a flat 60 psi spare using a bike pump. I'm glad our spare is actually functional now...
Took it to America's Tire in Redwood City, got it replaced in 30 min. for $50 plus $22 labor+fees, and the dudes there were all right.
Oh, right: this time it was the front right tire. This had happened previously once before, with slightly different symptoms, to one of the front tires (don't remember which one...that's why this blog is necessary). They'd rotated the older new tire to the left rear wheel, and so this time they rotated the newer new tire to the right rear wheel.
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