Hey guys quick question. Put a new set of 11r 22.5 on my front drive axle (all 4) about 10k miles ago. Looking at the tires now I see the inside lugs on inside lefttire are worn 3/8 inch more than the others. Everything else wearing fine. What causes that?

 

Lots of variables can cause this. Improper inflation pressures, broken belts, mixing closed shoulder and open shoulder tires. New tires on the forward axle and worn tires on the rear axle. Most commonly, an open shoulder tire that is very heavily loaded will chop and wear very unevenly. Is it a Chinese tire?

 

Firestone. What's a open and closed shoulder tire?

 

Closed shoulder looks like a trailer tire kinda hence closed shoulder. You would use it for highway use only. Open shoulder is open with lugs for trucks that go to landfills and other mixed driving snow,ect.

 

I thought that's what they were. Thanks for the clarification. While we are on it we were looking at another drive tire that had some very bad wear. It was only one of the duals although both were wore bad thos one ended up looking like a sanddune type tire. What I mean is that every 6" the lugs are wore completly out and build up to about half wore out then it cuts back down to smooth builds back up and so on. The wear goes all the way across the tire. Any ideas on that one?

 

That sounds like an overloaded tire. How heavy do you run? If you run heavy on a regular basis stay away from an open shoulder tire, go with a closed shoulder. I have had this issue on a couple of our single axle heavy wreckers. I tried different brands of tire to no avail. We liked the open shoulder design for winter traction but no matter what they always chopped up bad and wore quickly. I started putting closed shoulder tires on all the heavies and the problem went away instantly.

 

I just put 2 grand worth of tires on my truck and now it strays to the right. Didn't do that before with the old tires.

 

what brand of tires? size?

seems odd from my perspective, new rubber has usually fixed any issue i have haha

 

295/75R22.5's all around.

Firestone's on the steer and Roadlux on the drives. I know the Roadslux are Chinese, but I don't think the drives would make the truck wander one way or another anyway unless there was an alignment problem to begin with.

 

Alignments are about the only aspect of a big truck that I never got involved in at my old job, but i have heard them say that if your steers are out of alignment that it can cause the front drives to cup out of the insides. Combine that with an open shoulder drive and they can wear funny. We had a fleet of 379 pete's that almost all of em would wear the inside treads out, but the owner wouldn't switch to a less aggressive tire, so we could never really see if that would help.

 

Drives can make a truck wander, however, I would look at your steers first. You'll probably find a heavy spot in them.

I have noticed this problem with bridgestone, firestone, goodyear, and certain "off" brands. The ONLY tire we haven't experienced this with thus far, has been the michelin steers. They are still consistent, but will probably go sideways in the future.

Also, if you are running capped tires, don't mix michelin casings with any other brand, it won't work, and will cause all worlds of weirdness with your treadwear and handling.

 

Worn out shocks can cause irregular tire wear. Not sure if that's your problem, not even 100% sure it was all of mine. I had a few odd lugs cutting down inside the closed shoulder on 4 of my bridegstone m726 drives. These tires with irregular wear were on the front and back axles. Bought the truck used and had about 75% of virgin rubber left with lugs that were cutting down oddly like unbalanced or something??. The shocks were toasted looked like factory originals, replaced those and the problem never went away. Balanced tires put centramatics on, no help. Had 3 axle alignment done, no help. Ran them down to 5/32's over the past couple of years and replaced with yokahama's plus new shocks. Now no more weird wear patterns or shaking. The closed shoulder on those bridgestones also wore unevenly. So from now on anytime I put tires on I replace the shocks and have alignment checked/corrected. Lots of people told me once a tire starts wearing badly there's nothing can be done to stop the irregular wear. I found this to be true but thankfully now my new tires are riding/wearing smooth as a caddilac..

 

Heres my 2 cents, I think your rear drives are out of alignment. At my last job they were sticklers on tire wear and we did 6 axle alignments alot. If the rears are "fighting" each other they will cause wear like your seeing, same as a truck that has the "toe" issue. As for the wave you were describing, I would guess that you had a bad shock and once it starts there really is no good way to make it stop. I would take your truck to a good alignment shop and get it looked over, tires are 2nd only to fuel when it comes to OTR truck maintence.
DS79

 

negative. all else is second to brakes.

 

What are you smoking? Brakes are the easiest and cheapest. I can get over 500,000 miles on the original OEM shoes. I hope you were joking.

Guardrail