For those who may need to use the Tire Sealant for a small tread-area puncture, I found a couple interesting things on the Honda site. 1) Wheel Resonators are installed onto the center of the wheels to reduce road nose. They are not serviceable or replaceable, and damage will require a New Wheel. However, they can be cleaned. 2) When tire sealant is used, the sealant can be removed and the Resonator must also be cleaned out. Thought these were important points to be aware for a tire shop as well as a DIYer.
Those resonators help explain why the OEM wheels cost an eye-watering $1100 each. I doubt our much cheaper Clarity accessory wheels have resonators, but I haven't noticed any "tire cavity noise." Do any other cars (such as luxury cars) employ wheel resonators? I like the looks of the accessory wheels better than the stock wheels, so I put our snow tires on the stock wheels and moved the OEM tires to the accessory wheels. The Nokian Hakkapeliitta (tough to memorize that name!) snow tires I put on the stock wheels are so noisy that the resonators are completely wasted. However, I doubt there are any snow tires quiet enough for the resonators to provide a detectable benefit. Looking at the photo, I see a green "swoosh." Are these Nike tire resonators? Just kidding.
Here's an article from Honda explaining their research into this. Another cool feature missing from their brochure and ads. It helps reduce resonance sound level at 220hz from vibration/impact. Have you ever bounced a tire mounted on a wheel and it has a basketball-like sound? https://world.honda.com/tech/auto/noise-reducing-wheel/
Insight man, there is another post about winter tires and sizing etc. Did you go with OEM sized winters or drop a size? Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
I remember one of the video said the resonators are designed to match the noise generate by the wheel at certain weight.... If the winter tires weight difference exceed the designed range, maybe the resonators can't do what it is designed to do
Good luck finding snow tires so quiet that the resonators will make a difference in the sound transmitted to the cabin. Supposed "all-season" tires are quieter, but can't offer the traction of genuine snow tires. That traction combined with the 2-ton weight of the Clarity really got the job done last winter. My sub-ton Honda Insight with smaller versions of the same tires manages to get through the snow, but not as well as our Clarity. However, we couldn't wait for Spring to get back onto the factory rubber to get away from the constant humming of those snow tires. With the news about the resonators, I now know our 3-season ride could be even quieter had I kept the original tires on the original wheels, but the (better-looking IMHO) accessory wheels with the original tires are quiet enough for us, even though they don't have the resonators. I wonder how much of the $1100 replacement cost of the OEM wheels is due to the resonators?
Wow, it never ceases to amaze me the efforts put by the engineers to deal with sound and I am very surprised that Bean Counters let them include it. The Clarity is an incredible value.
The resonators are supposed to generate sound wave that matches the frequency generated from the wheels, if it works well on the original wheels/tires then it will at least cancel some of the noise with snow tires if the weight matches.