right front tire wear

[stevenal]

Yes, I know I should rotate my tires more often.

I noticed the wear on my right front tire today. It's much worse than the other three. The outer edge is the worst, but it has more wear than the others all the way across. Web searches bring up information regarding uneven wear across the tire and front versus rear, but nothing about right versus left. I'd blame the one most often in the passenger seat, but the one in the driver's seat weighs more. Any idea why I might be seeing this wear (besides my confession above)? Thanks.

[restlessways]

srschang wrote:

restlessways wrote:
All 3 of my Ram 3500 duallies have scrubbed the right front tire.

This is my 6th Ram/Cummins, but my first dually. My camper is about 4800# loaded for camping. At 24,000 miles here's the passenger and driver front tires. Both are scrubbing on the outside, but the passenger side is much worse. I took it in for alignment, the passenger side toe was .22deg, the driver was .08deg.

Oh, and when I weighed the truck and then the truck and camper at the CAT scale, the front end of the truck is 40# lighter with the camper on.

I should post a pic of my right front tire. It looks almost identical to your right front.

[Grit_dog]

I wonder…

[stevenal]

srschange,
Those look just like the tires I replaced, compete with the circumferential wear indicators.
I also wonder if road crowning has this effect on high center of gravity loaded vehicles. The right leaning Monster TCs on SWR trucks can be very noticeable on the road.

[Grit_dog]

But one can’t complain about low treadlife in the scenarios above. Especially with a dually, if you sit and watch tread disappear month after month and don’t do anything about.

[Grit_dog]

Y’all realize that due to the crown in the road, there will be slightly more RF outer wear. Very slight and likely only noticeable to the non rotate proponents.
Also the outer treads are always bound to wear more due to turning at speed. The type of roads, speeds and loads determine how much.
In the pic above that alignment was a bit pigeon toed. Which you found out. These trucks like 0 deg toe. Dead straight.
And then above all that, duallies will always wear quicker on the front than comparable srw due to the pizza cutter tires that have a slightly narrower outside track width, less rubber in the ground and closer maxing out rated load due to lower load ratings.

All this becomes very apparent if one has a similar srw to compare and especially if you let the tires wear out without rotating.

On the extreme end of it I had a few years where the majority of the miles were high speed mountain freeway miles, through a twisty canyon 2x a day. Vehicles would wear the tread twice as fast on the outer sides even with more frequent than usual rotations. To the point that to extend tire life, after 15-20k miles I’d remount the tires outside-in and put the good tread depth to the outside. Not as easy to discern in other scenarios of course.

[srschang]

restlessways wrote:
All 3 of my Ram 3500 duallies have scrubbed the right front tire.

This is my 6th Ram/Cummins, but my first dually. My camper is about 4800# loaded for camping. At 24,000 miles here's the passenger and driver front tires. Both are scrubbing on the outside, but the passenger side is much worse. I took it in for alignment, the passenger side toe was .22deg, the driver was .08deg.

Oh, and when I weighed the truck and then the truck and camper at the CAT scale, the front end of the truck is 40# lighter with the camper on.

Passenger



Driver

[restlessways]

All 3 of my Ram 3500 duallies have scrubbed the right front tire.

[Grit_dog]

What was the toe set at and what was it before alignment? What does the printout say?
You seemed concerned about this but didn’t confirm whether the most likely issue was the cause?
If you want to be in tune with what your tires are doing or need, you have to understand at least the basics.
Which brings the next comment. You can’t predict what the best rotation pattern is, ahead of time. And in fact X pattern is rarely ever the best pattern especially for 4wd trucks but generally any vehicle. For the simple reason that steer axle vs drive axle generally always feather in the opposite direction as one is getting its most wear while braking and the other while accelerating.
Unfortunately like a lot of mechanic services, tire techs aren’t always the best to determine this and undeniably, tire shops have no vested interest in making a customers tires last as long as possible. That hurts profit margin when ya sell less tires….lol.

[stevenal]

New tires and alignment performed. Tech said alignment was not far off. I drove to a highway scale today. The defective scale read -38500. Just the same, I put each front wheel on the scale, and the right was 150 less negative than the left. This was with no one in the passenger seat and a full tank of water (tank is on the right). I'll be cross rotating the new tires.

[Grit_dog]

stevenal wrote:

Bedlam wrote:
From what you are describing, toe got knocked inwards on the right front causing the tire to scuff when driving forward.

Without affecting the handling? It drives great.

Let’s recap, there may be nothing or nothing significant wrong.
1. You’ve never rotated them, so who knows, under inflation, driving habits, positional wear, all kinds of things could cause a little more tire wear in one area that is not cause for concern.
2. All of the above, plus, the tires are basically wore out. So who knows…
3. It’s virtually impossible that in 33k miles on the front of a big heavy truck that there is no tread feathering. And once there is, wear is exaggerated on the edges (outside) that se the most stress or weight in corners.
4. With the run it blindly method of tire care, only a couple 32nds of different wear in one spot over that many miles is not totally unexpected.

Since you’re due for tires, if this is bothering you that you may kill a new set of tires, spend the $100-150 and get the alignment checked. Toe and camber is all you’re after. And on that truck (4wd I presume) camber better be 0 or **** close, or your ball joints are trashed (not likely) or your axle is bent (even less likely) or the knuckle on that side is out of spec (even less likely).
You want toe at dead zero or slight toe in. I prefer 0. Helps with tire wear without having too much wandering.
And that’s it.
Caster is basically immaterial unless it’s exhibiting symptoms of too much or too little caster. Also not likely.

Then go get ya a new set of baloney skins and worry about something else for the next 30-50k miles.
And watch and rotate them or don’t. Depends what camp yer in there.

[Grit_dog]

JRscooby wrote:

JimK-NY wrote:
As already mentioned, this sort of abnormal wear indicates an issue with alignment or a similar issue.

Don't feel bad about skipping the tire rotations. Rotations would only disguise the issue. You now know something is wrong and needs to be fixed. I feel this way about tire rotations in general. I have not done tire rotations on my cars in decades. The only issue I have had is tires wearing differently front to back. No problem. I just replace the front or back set as needed. On my truck camper the rear tires wear at twice the rate of the front tires. At about 15-20K miles, I switch out the front and rear tires. After another 15-20K I replace the rear set with new tires. Following this schedule I always have relatively new, minimally worn tires on the rear axle.

This is how I live. My thought is if a tire in 1 position is wearing 20% faster than normal, you rotate like suggested, you have 4 tires wearing 5% faster than should, plus you don't see the wear. Replace all tires, wear out 4 more.

Roflmao…for a couple guys that profess to know a lot about vehicles and claim to work on them yourselves (IE my impression is that both of your are, at a minimum, pretty handy shade tree mechanics), this is the silliest excuse I’ve ever heard for not rotating tires.
Granted, different tires, different vehicles , different tread, different driving conditions / loads all factor in to what is or may be appropriate for rotation. Not just frequency but position.
But a blanket statement that rotating tires is bunk or unnecessary is just passing along bad intel to those who don’t know no better…

[stevenal]

Bedlam wrote:
From what you are describing, toe got knocked inwards on the right front causing the tire to scuff when driving forward.

Without affecting the handling? It drives great.

[Bedlam]

From what you are describing, toe got knocked inwards on the right front causing the tire to scuff when driving forward.

[stevenal]

I have my doubts regarding taking a decent photo of black tire tread on a black tire. Here is a little more detail, though.

After studying all four for awhile, I have decided these Wranglers don't have treadwear indicators running across the tire like most do, but have two that run around the tire near each edge. The rf tire's outside indicator is completely gone, while the inside indicator is still visible and right at tread depth. The lf outer indicator looks like the inner rf indicator, and the inner one still has some clearance. The rear tires both look good with even wear across and from tire to tire. None of the tires show cupping or feathering, or any of the other wear patterns that show up on web searches.

Most of the 33K has been on freeways and highways. I am a cautious driver who gets at least a 100k between brake jobs and always take the curves slowly. (the dogs appreciate this)