Greetings from a new member! I know NOTHING about modifications, and very little about mechanics in general, so I'll try to be clear with my questions and not embarrass myself. This seems like a knowledgeable bunch of guys, so I'll try to keep up...:confused:

I have these Yokohama tires, all the same size, all seasons, in great shape, like 95% tread, that came with the car. I bought the car in winter, when in Ottawa there was like 2 feet of snow everywhere, and lots of snow on the the streets. No noise was apparent. When the roads dried up, and I got onto dry pavement, I could hear a noise when cornering right, lesser noise when cornering left, apparent at all speeds, but related to vehicle speed rather than motor speed. It sounded for all the world like tread hitting something, (vut-vut-vut-vut) so I tried turning the wheel hard over while parked, both ways, to see if I could see any rubbing plastic or metal on the tire. Couldn't.

Took it to a Subaru mechanic at the original dealer for the car, who test drove it, said it's a bad right front tire, although you can't see anything wrong from the outside of the tire. This makes sense cuz the noise SEEMED to be coming from the right front especially on a hard left corner. The wheel bearings, tie rods, CV boots were all visually checked and checked by hand also, with no apparent problems.

He said to rotate the tires and see if the noise followed the tire (makes perfect sense to me but like I said I have no clue in general.)

1. The tires are unidirectional, they have a rotation arrow on them, so I couldn't rotate from front to opposite rear without flipping the tires on the rims. Is this a problem or will it cause mechanical problems that I just swapped front-rear, which DID change the sound, now it's constant but only about half the intensity of before, way better in corners. I can't really feel it through the steering wheel any more, but it was a very faint feeling before anyway. Does the front-rear swap screw anything up? I can't see how it would, but if I'm flirting with disaster I'd appreciate a heads-up.

NOTE: there never was ANY apparent tread wear on any of the tires, they seem to be wearing uniformly.

2. The sound is annoying, but there's no real vibration apparent in the ar or through the steering wheel. When I take it up to about 120k or 70 mph, there IS a slight vibration in the entire car in tune with the sound and the sound SEEMS to be coming from the suspect (rear) tire. This is only apparent at higher speed, so am I right in saying the it all points to a defective tire? Can you "break" tires by hitting potholes etc., or does something mechanical usually give out before you actually break a belt or cord?
=============