Weird tire wear

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A long time ago, my daughter bought a used 1999 Accord with Bridgestone tires on it. LF shows wear on the inside, so I rotate and the inside wear on that tire continues. At least one of those tires wore down to the belts before I replaced them. Didn't care much about using those tires up, planned to align when I put a new set on. Put a set of Michelin on it and went to the alignment shop. In spec, only charged me $30 since no adjustment was required.

Told the alignment technician about the last set wearing on the inside of the LF, he reiterated it was in spec. Left confused and fearing the new set would wear in the same place. Never did, that set of Michelin's went 80K and always wore evenly. Don't have a clue why the Bridgestone's would wear on the inside of the LF, even with rotation, when the alignment wasn't off. Any ideas?
 
Originally Posted by JohnnyJohnson
My guess is you need an alignment done by a different shop.

he went 80k on his next set of tires with no issues so nothing wrong with that shop what so ever.
 
Maybe the seller of the car noticed bad wear and got it aligned. Then came up with a reason to sell the car, but the damage to the tire was already done. Or maybe he bought a good set of tires, then decided to sell the car, and did a quick swap to put some junk tires on (so as to keep the good ones).

That's my guess.
 
had the same happen with my wifes ford focus....left front tire wore almost smooth across except for the two inside ribs...had alignment checked, was inline 100% took to another shop just to be sure about alignment , all was good...all I could think was a defective tire...new tires still going strong wearing great...both alignment shops told me the same thing, could very well be a defective tire
 
Originally Posted by supton
Maybe the seller of the car noticed bad wear and got it aligned. Then came up with a reason to sell the car, but the damage to the tire was already done. Or maybe he bought a good set of tires, then decided to sell the car, and did a quick swap to put some junk tires on (so as to keep the good ones).

That's my guess.


Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!

We have a winner!
 
Originally Posted by CapriRacer
Originally Posted by supton
Maybe the seller of the car noticed bad wear and got it aligned. Then came up with a reason to sell the car, but the damage to the tire was already done. Or maybe he bought a good set of tires, then decided to sell the car, and did a quick swap to put some junk tires on (so as to keep the good ones).

That's my guess.


Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!

We have a winner!


There was no tire wear evident when the car was purchased. All tires had good tread at purchase. Uneven tire wear appeared after putting some miles on it.
 
To clarify: With the same alignment that measured in spec and with no adjustment, that gave 80K miles of even wear with a subsequent set of Michelins, the previous set of Bridgestones wore on the inside of the LF, with any tire of that set rotated to the LF position.

I know it sounds implausible or impossible, that's why I'm looking for possible explanations. I don't have any. It is a mystery to me.

Still own the car and it has 235K miles on it and the current set of Costco Michelin Defenders are wearing evenly with it never being aligned since it was purchased used with 90K miles on it.
 
Once a tire is worn uneven, the uneven wear will continue.

When you rotated the tire that had uneven wear to another position, the tread on the inside is less than the tread on the outside. Let's assume that the position you rotated has correct alignment and no reason to cause abnormal wear. For sake of this example, let's also assume that when you found the uneven wear, the outside of the tire was down to 6/32 and the inside was down to 4/32. You are going to leave the unevenly worn tire in that position for the next 10k miles, and that results in 2/32" of tire wear on all tires, including the tire with uneven wear.

The outside of the tire wore 2/32 and the inside, where it was already low on tread, also worn 2/32. So now the outside of the tire is down to 4/32 and the inside of the tire is down to 2/32, already down to the wear marks. But you want to get full life out of the other tires so you continue to drive another 10k miles on the set. Now all the other tires, and the outside of the unevenly worn tire, are down to 2/32 and ready for replacement. But the inside of the uneven tire is bald.

Moving a tire with uneven wear to another position does not stop if from continuing to wear. The damage is done.
 
That isn't what happened. Any tire previously at another position on the car and that had even wear, when moved to the LF had uneven wear.
 
Some fuel for thought.

While excessive camber (anything over 1°, IMHO) is what causes one sided wear, toe is the multiplier. Put another way, a little bit of camber and a lot of toe is worse than a lot of camber with little toe.

Toe is very easy to change and most techs think of setting the toe as part of the procedure. Changing camber and caster is where the work is.

Plus, toe spec tolerances are usually too wide, fooling many techs into thinking that the alignment is good when it's not.
 
I only have one possible explanation, the tires were defective causing uneven wear. Is that even possible that a manufacturing flaw can cause uneven tire wear?
 
Originally Posted by ledslinger
I only have one possible explanation, the tires were defective causing uneven wear. Is that even possible that a manufacturing flaw can cause uneven tire wear?


The defects I thought would have caused uneven wear didn't (based on returned tires). What has caused uneven wear was alignment.

Allow me to tell a story that will help fill in some of the blanks:

The company I worked for supplied a car model that was built in 2 different plants. The one plant had lots of irregular wear complaints and the other didn't. The plants each credited (blamed) the tire brand (each plant had a different tire brand) - but the design team in Detroit wasn't so sure because the plants had different alignment statistics (how close to spec did they got the alignment.)

The tire companies said the problem was alignment, and that the wear would be aggravated by consumers not using enough inflation pressure.

So the vehicle manufacturer conducted a test. They tested 2 levels of each of these 4 parameters: Camber, Inflation pressure, toe, and tire brand. They conducted the test on a pulley wheel especially designed to test tire wear.

The largest contributor? Toe! Followed by inflation pressure, followed by the interaction of toe and inflation pressure, followed by camber, etc. The least significance was tire brand.

So I'm sticking with the cause being camber with excessive amounts of toe, where the toe was adjusted when you the vehicle was aligned.
 
This is all over my head, but I'd be curious to see your alignment numbers if the shop gave them to you. Maybe the in spec numbers are too generous/broad, and you were on the edge.
 
Originally Posted by sxg6
This is all over my head, but I'd be curious to see your alignment numbers if the shop gave them to you. Maybe the in spec numbers are too generous/broad, and you were on the edge.


Over 100K miles of even tire wear without any change in alignment since the uneven tire wear with the Bridgestones.
 
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