Tow Vehicle - Front Tire Wear Issue

[ron_dittmer]

We tow a 2006 Jeep Liberty 4x4. I have noticed that after towing it, the Liberty's front tires rumble. So I've spun the tires on a balance machine and found only those two front tires have significant flat areas, I assume created when being pulled into turns from the motor home. The flat areas are not flat to the road, but consistently favoring the outside portion of the tire. That rules out an over-aggresive tow brake. The flat areas can measure numerous inches in size, not chaffing as is common with a poor wheel alignment of poor balancing. The Liberty's wheel alignment is good, and tires properly balanced prior to the beginning of the trip. The steering wheel is always unlocked and seems to track well when being pulled around in turns. The tow vehicle follows calmly behind the motor home, never dancing back there as my backup camera watches it well.

This is my second set of tires. The problem has been the same with both sets, but with just the front tires after being towed. Rotating the tires yield 4 tires that rumble after the next towing experience.

Has anyone here experienced this with their tow vehicle? If so, have you ever found a reason for it, and can offer a solution? Please don't mention a tow dolly here.

[Gene_in_NE]

ron.dittmer - There is at least one other person towing a Jeep Liberty with a front tire problem click here like yours. My guess is that "Dakzuki" has the reason and the other person "imgoin4it" in the link above had the same tires as you. Hope that helps.

[Livies_Dad]

Cant offer a reason why for your situation but I have towed a 2006 CRV for over 45k miles and no tire issues. Rotate about every 6k and rebalance. tires wearing all even. Present tires have over 30k miles on them. Front of car has not received any damage from being towed 4 down. Will get messy if towed in rain.

[Harvard]

My experience with this is with THE REAR WHEELS of a 2007 Honda Civic and had nothing to do with towing, just an every day result of a questionable independent rear wheel design and alignment specifications. I might add, a set of wheels which were are always in "tow" mode.

On this vehicle when the rear suspension is "pushed down", the the rear wheel CAMBER changes (minus towards a plus) which causes the the REAR WHEELs to TOW IN more then a stationary TOE IN.

This vehicle was manufactured/shipped from the factory with a -1.5 Degree CAMBER CONTROL ARM. After the complaints started to come in Honda issued a TSB where the FIXED CAMBER CONTROL ARM was changed the CAMBER to a neutral -0.75 Degrees. This helped some but still caused rear tires to "scallop" for lack of a better word.

Because Honda would no longer warantee this tire wear I went to a 3rd party ADJUSTABLE REAR CAMBER CONTROL ARM. I set the rear CAMBER to 0.0 Degrees and changed the TOE to 0.0 Degrees. So now we have 0.0 Degrees of TOE UNTIL we sit in the car then our weight gives us some TOE IN and having done this many many miles and years ago it seems to have worked.

As far as the front wheels of a Jeep are concerned, I would clamp a laser level to a front wheel to see what the front TOE does when the front suspension is compressed. If you see a change in TOE then that could be a starting point to open a discussion.

[Dakzuki]

ROn,

I'm thinking the suspension geometry of the jeep had enough caster in it that it really wants to stay in a straight line (making it very stable). The flip side of this is it doesn't want to change directions and you are forcing the direction change in the steering via an input from the wheel/tire assembly rather than the steering wheel. What I believe you are seeing on the tires is sometimes called scalloping. Once it starts, it keeps eating at the same spot in the tire making the worn spots worse. I have seen it on an E series van before. I don't think you can do much about it. As J-D said, the dingy forum may be a better place to ask the question. There may be more Liberty towers there.

[j-d]

Ron, I don't have specifics to offer, but I can say that Four-Down has two drawbacks:
1. It is expensive in equipment investment, particularly if you change vehicles often. But expensive even if you don't, compared to a used dolly.
2. It subjects the toad to conditions that it wasn't designed for. I've heard of premature front tire "wear" being an issue with other towed vehicles. Also exposes toad to more road debris damage than on dolly or trailer.

This would probably be a better question for the Dinghy Towing forum.

We tow four-down, by the way. But we've only taken a couple trips over 100 miles each way. If our vehicles have a problem it probably would not show.