S-AWC Screen on Highway
 

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.evo...f243bfcc60.jpg
When driving above 60mph or so my S-AWC indicator lights up a little as seen in the pic (sorry its blurry, but basically the opposite "corners" light up a single "bar" and it stays like that until I slow down below 60mph). A couple days ago on the highway I got the dreaded 4w service error and my AWC shut off making me think its the pump. However the pump is only 4 years/15k miles old (low miles due to me leaving for school) so I don't believe it could be the pump already.

Other things to note is that 2 summers ago I got a new tire due to hitting a pothole. I did shave the tire to match the tread of the other 3 however I did have to buy Continental's newer DWS tire as they didn't have the older one available for sale anymore (the other 3 tires on my car). I drove that way for a while and didn't seem to have this issue. Also, there is one tire that is consistently slowly loosing pressure over the span of several weeks but was just filled a week ago.

I'm assuming this can't be good driving this way over a long period of time so any ideas on what the likely problem is?

Edit: also changing it to Snow mode while driving seems to stop "solve" it but the ACD indicator activates a lot more and a lot harder

Driving with different wheels on an AWD car is a horrible idea man - get new set of tires all four corners get a proper all wheel alignment and hopefully you didn't wear down anything expensive.

Thats why I shaved the brand new tire to match tread and also got the same continental tire but they only had the updated version for sale which has a slightly different tread pattern. Is the slight variation in tread pattern that horrible on the car if I shaved it to match the wear on the others?

I guess I would never believe someone shaving a tire would be as precise as you needed it to be. If they go too little or too much they have upset the AWD system by having different rotational speeds between tires. Don't risk damaging AWD components imo - get all four matching tires. If you blow out a tire at 20k - sucks - but replace all four. Good luck, but AWD sucks in some ways for a reason lol

The margin for error when shaving a tire is nowhere near large enough to cause damage to the drivetrain. There is no reason to replace all 4 tires unless they're already close to worn out anyway. There's no sense in throwing money away.

I'm a bit confused why you make that contention when the original poster is describing symptoms with their AWD system that indicate variance between wheels / sides of the car. How else / why else would he be experiencing those things when he told us his wheel setup and things that he changed / did that led to this behavior?

Something is pissing off his AWD, if it isn't the tires, what else would it be? If it IS the tires pissing off his AWD, that's not a good thing and can lead to damage of the transfer case and other components.

Update: I got the tires rotated and now instead of the original issue, the center bar is lighting up 2 bars and consistently sataying that way whenever I drive over 60mph. How awful is this gonna be for the ACD if I keep driving this way?

If rotating the tires changed your symptoms, I think it’s pretty clear what’s wrong.

None of of us can answer 100% if you can keep driving like that and not damage anything. But the tires are definitely putting a strain of your AWD system. Hopefully it’s just the pump that will wear out. But still, that’s not cheap. You are risking thousands of dollars of repair when you could spend $800 and have new tires.

Just get the tires.

Just so you know if you damage the transfer case with this activity, that's around $4500 to replace. Not worth pushing it imo...

Would the weight of different tires, even if the diameter are the same, have an effect on the awd pumps/system components.???

Driving w Spare tire over 60mph lights up the center bar?

No, I’m not using the spare tire

I think Joe is suggesting if you take off the different tire and put the spare on, does it do the same thing.