Hi everyone, as the title says, I went to a local shop to change my summer tires on my Honda Clarity OEM mag's. I noticed that some of the resonators are damaged (pushed in). I was wondering if I need to replace the whole mag or is fine to drive with them like that since the wheel was balanced with them damaged? Thank you in advance and have a nice day!
My guess is that it's fine to drive with damaged resonators as long as they still are in one piece. As you noted, the wheels were balanced with them in that condition. My only concerns would be that they no longer may be as effective at dampening road noise, or that pieces might break off and get flung around inside the tire. The resonators are plastic and seem to be fairly lightweight so, even in that case, the impact might be minimal.
I don't think anyone really has been able to determine how much the resonators help with road noise. I'd just run the "damaged" resonators and see if it seems too loud to you. If it does, there is a set of 4 wheels on Ebay for $155 each. The photo looks like resonators are intact and undamaged, but I'd ask the seller before I bought..... https://www.ebay.com/itm/315120201187 Shipping is free which is surprising for used wheels
I wondered about this too. I actually considered temporarily removing the resonators from one wheel to see if that made a difference, but didn't see any way to do that -- they don't seem to be replaceable. AFAIK, no one has reported increased road noice after swapping to wheels that lacked resonators.
Thanks for the answers guys! So far I didn't notice any change in road noise and vibrations. I guess only time will tell!
These resonators annoy me. Honda should not have incorporated these fragile plastic things that can easily be damaged by a tire shop who likely doesn't even know they are there. To make matters worse, if they are damaged, then the whole wheel has to be replaced ??????!!!! It is just a ridiculous situation. And how would your average owner even know that they were damaged? I presume the only way you knew is that you were standing there as the technician changed to your summer tires? If you didn't actually watch them, how do you know whether they damaged them, or was it damage on a previous tire change? If this happens to me, I would certainly not look to replace the expensive wheels... I would just have the darned things removed (chipped out?) in order to not have loose pieces flying around in there and go with it. Sorry for the rant, but these should have been robust enough to make inadvertent damage impossible, OR they should have been designed to be easily replaced.
Thanks for that picture. I’m getting new tires next week (OEM lasted 52k) and told Costco about these. I’m giving them a printout just in case they break them because if they break them they are going to fix them - or replace them.
I'd prefer Honda had worked harder to make the engine quieter. I drive most of the year on the Clarity accessory wheels with the Clarity's OEM tires. Those (better looking IMO) wheels don't have the flimsy resonators, yet I never notice road noise, except on noisy roads where I doubt the resonators would help.
Part of the reason I decided to swap the Clarity's tires myself (rather than letting my tire shop do it) was due to these resonators. I wanted to get a good look at them and also assess how prone they are to damage (discussed here). I'm sorry to see @Andrew97 confirm that they can be damaged easily.
