Outside edge of front tires stairstepping

Is it normal for the outside edges of the front tires to be stairstepping on the outer inch or two only?

By stairstepping, I mean that you can't see the wear all that much but if you rub your hand over the tread in one direction, you can feel a lip on each side swipe tread.

If you run your hand over in the other direction, you don't feel it. You only feel it if you run your hand from back to front on the outside tread of the two front tires.

If you do the same with the rear tires or on the inner edge of the front tires, you don't feel any 'stairstepping".

The tires are about a year old and are wearing the front outside edges only.

Reply to
Chaya Eve
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What you feel is known as feathering, one side of the tread block wears more than the other. If you looked at the end of the block it would appear as a wedge.

It is commonly caused by improper toe settings and if on one edge only by improper camber angle as well. BUT it can also be caused by using a common tire on a vehicle that is driven aggressively. IE high speed cornering. That places a lot of weight on the outer edge of the tire and tries to force it to roll under. That will wear the outer edges rapidly.

Now if you had one spot that was "normal" then a wear spot then "normal" going all the way around the tire that would be cupping. That is normally a suspension wear problem.

Reply to
Steve W.

Your toe-in should be adjusted. Your tires have negative toe or your suspension is loosey-goosey.

Reply to
dsi1

That was a far better answer than I had expected so I appreciate your expertise. The vehicle was aligned but probably about 2 years ago (while the tires are about a year old).

The car is driven on a five mile hill every day with scores of hairpins but it's NEVER driven fast. Those turns are made probably at 20 to 25 MPH (you can't take the turns any faster and stay on your side of the road).

Could that steep (10% or so) continuously twisting 5-miles each way every day have caused the "feathering" you explained my "stairstepping" to be?

Reply to
Chaya Eve

Bet you a dollar that if you took your ride into a good repair shop, they'd find that your alignment is out of spec...

Reply to
Wade Garrett

Does not sound normal to me. Could be the toe-in is not adjusted properly. How many miles on the car? Every checked the alignment?

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

If it were only the tires tilted inward at the front (toe) the whole tread would be "feathered" would it not? This only has the outside edge of both front tires feathered. So it can't be "just" toe.

I don't see how the miles matter but it has about 60K miles. Miles would have nothing to do with this other than suspension wear but nobody is suggesting suspension wear based on the evidence (for example, no cupping).

The alignment was last done about two years ago. The tires are about a year old.

My take on this is that it's either "normal" for a car that is driven by necessity (slowly) on twisty steep (10%) mountain roads for 10 miles (5 each way) every day, or there is something wrong.

It's not going to be a single thing since the entire width of the tread is not feathered (only the outside edges) and since it's both front tires, it's not obvious that it's something worn or out of alignment.

Reply to
Chaya Eve

If it is the alignment, do you concur that it's a combination of the front camber (tilted out too high at the top) and toe (turned inward too much at the front).

The tires are "feathered" only on the outside edge of the tread (last inch or two) evenly on both tires, but only on the front.

Reply to
Chaya Eve

That means you *are* traveling very fast, at least for the conditions. What you are saying is that you are leaving no safety margin on each hairpin. You will definitely be wearing the outer edges of the tyres doing that.

The hairpins are the reason for the feathering on the outer edges of the tread. If you adjust to eliminate the feathering on curves, you may see wear on the inside of the tread instead. It is a suspension geometry anomaly, a compromise if you will, that you can do little about. If you only drove on a freeway every day, you would see no feathering. FWD vehicles tend to fare worse for a number of reasons, one being the greater SAI angles generally used on them, another being the greater weight on the steering axles. I get the same issue here with my Toyota due to the predominance of roundabouts and sharp corners I need to negotiate. The steering alignment was, and is, spot on.

Toe specs are usually given as a range. Set yours to the favourable side of the spec range realising that FWD vehicles tend to be positive toe rather than negative.

Reply to
Xeno

Above my pay grade.

For anything other than the over-inflation wear pattern (center tread wear) I take it in for an alignment.

Reply to
Wade Garrett

Done by an expert at a specialty alignment shop? Done by some bozo at the tire store?

Do you have the paperwork from the last alignment? Did they make dramatic changes to the alignment?

My inclination is to suspect that alignments done by the average tire shop are apt to make things worse rather than better.

This is true, and one person's "slowly" is another person's "way too fast."

If I were the original poster I would take the car to a real alignment shop and have them check over the suspension and the alignment, and you should point the tread wear out to the alignment tech. And they should let you talk to the actual alignment tech, not just to some manager. And if that came back without any real changes, I'd keep driving and not worry.

However, I might consider investing in higher performance tires next time when these wear out. They may or may not last longer, but they will sure make driving those twisty roads more enjoyable and more safe too.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Camber does not cause feathering. It does cause wear on one side.

The greatest cause of outside edge tyre wear is overenthusiastic cornering.

One point I should note. By all means have your alignment checked. One thing that can cause feathering is a bent steering arm. Typically, a bent steering arm will cause a change in toe. If the technician just corrected the toe, he will have missed the real issue and the car will now have incorrect *toe out on turns*. A *toe out on turns check* should always be done at a wheel alignment as it will show up issues like bent steering arms.

Reply to
Xeno

My car is a little over a year old. At the one year mark (20,000 km/12,00 mi) I noticed feathering. Had an alignment check - all was ok. Apparently it is common for outside edge feathering depending on the type of driving. My car sees mostly urban driving.

If your wheel alignment specs are normal, colour the wear normal as well.

Reply to
Xeno

Miles is an indicator of potential problems. If you said it had 4,000 miles I'd think the alignment and front end are good unless you hit a big pot hole. At 60,000 miles things wear, get banged around. Different things should be checked.

Bingo!. Probably too much toe in. Have it checked and rotate the tires so they don't get much worse on the front.

Obvious to me that something is not right. Certainly not normal.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

An alignment only shop with something called "Hunger" which was a big red machine with a computer screen and mirrors which he drove the car on to do the alignment.

I wish I had saved the papers. It was about 100 dollars with a coupon as I recall and it took about a half hour at least, maybe a little bit more but they had no other cars waiting as I recall.

I don't remember anything unusual but now I see why I would want to archive such things for reference.

I can't imagine that the technician didn't know how to do his job. It was a shop where the mother ran the office and he did the work and they were the only two people there.

I can hear the tires make noise but never screeching like kids do when they put those round black tire circles in the road pavement. Just a "scrunching" sound as I go around the turns.

It's a 2WD Toyota 4Runner if that makes any difference.

I don't think I can take the turns much slower than about 20mph as I'm always the one who pulls over to let others pass me on that road.

I just want to know if the road curves are the problem, why the rear tires don't show the same outside feathering that the fronts show at 4K miles.

The tires are TREADWEAR = 380 if that's what you mean by "performance".

Reply to
Chaya Eve

I think the advice so far is good in that it's either of these two:

  1. Too much camber (top spread out) + too much toe (front spread in)
  2. Hills with curves

If it's the alignment (camber plus toe) it can only be fixed with an alignment. If it's the hills with curves, there's nothing to fix.

The fact that the rear tires have no obvious strange wear might be a clue to help. Would the hills with curves also affect the rear?

Or do hills with curves only affect the front feathering?

I don't enthusiastically corner. Period. I drive slowly. But I can't change the five miles each way that are hills with sharp curves where most are hairpins and there is no stripe in the road since it's too narrow for a center stripe.

I'm guessing the speeds are 20mps or so but the turns are extreme.

Would that only affect the front feathering leaving the rear unfeathered? It's a rear drive 2WD basic SUV with a solid rear axle I am told.

Anything can happen at a pothole or curb but I seriously doubt anything major is "bent" since I'm the only driver and it was thoroughly checked two years ago when I bought it, including a full four wheel alignment.

My main question is how to determine if the front feathering is only due to the 90 and 180 degree corners on a 10% grade (I'm told) I have to go through at 20 mph every day (at least twenty of them each way).

Would that type of hilly curve NOT affect the rear tires at all?

Reply to
Chaya Eve

Well, sometimes I can hear the tires scrape on the turns as I'm going so slowly (about 20 to 25mph) but I'm also heading downhill (or uphill) at a steep (I'm told it's consistently 10%) angle.

I never heard of angles in percentages but when I looked that up it seems to be the way they do roads.

The hilly curves might be the problem, in which case an alignment is a waste of money (I don't have a lot of money to eat up tires or to do superfluous alignments either).

Would the fact that the rear tires are not affected mean anything if I was trying to figure out if the curves were the problem?

On the five mile drive, there are about five hairpins where you literally end up going the opposite way you started (180 degrees). Generally you can take the hairpins wide on the outside direction but you have to take them narrow on inside part of the curve because you can't see around them.

The rest of the many curves are 90 degree curves. There aren't many less than 90 degrees.

The main question now that I know it can either be the curves or the alignment (too much toe in at the front of the front tires plus too much camber in at the top), I wonder if the fact the rear tires are fine tells you anything.

On a curvy hilly road, if the fronts were feathered from the curves, would the rears still be even?

This is what I'm wondering, which means there is nothing I can do to compensate other than maybe tire pressure and wheel rotation.

Frequent rotation would be obviously a given, but I noticed that a cross rotation (which is what they did) without the spare (the spare is a different width tire for some reason) still puts the feathered edge on the outside when the fronts were put on the rear.

Would you add MORE or LESS air to prevent the front tires feathering if it's the curves doing the feathering?

And would you have the tires mounted the other way every few rotations? (The problem with that is the inside is a whitewall so they'd all have to be remounted and not just the two feathered ones.)

It's a Toyota 2WD 4Runner.

I'm thinking of this as a plan so how does it sound?

  1. First I need to figure out if it's just the curves or if it could be the alignment so that's why I ask most of my questions, particularly why the rears are perfect while it's only the fronts that have the outside edge feathering the same on both tires.

  1. If it's alignment, then the answer is to pay the hundred bucks to have it aligned and that's all that can be done.

  2. However, if it's the curves, then an alignment is a waste of money better spent on food or tire rotations (which I get free at Costco).

  1. What I can do is just get rotations every three to six months which is never a bad thing anyway (it just takes time, mostly waiting in line).

  2. Since the tread is not directional and since the last rotation still put the feathered outside edge of the front tires on the rear in the same orientation, what do you think about having all four tires remounted the other way on every second rotation?

They have to be done all four because they're whitewall on one side only and blackwall on the other side only.

Does that sound like a good plan?

Reply to
Chaya Eve

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Reply to
AMuzi

You don't say what kind of vehicle, bur as a retired mechanic I'd say you most likely have an alignment issue, possibly complicated by loose ball joints or other suspension components. It definitely is NOT normal wear. Get it fixed.

Reply to
clare

Addeing a few pounds of air pressure usually reduces the problem significantly IF it is agressive cornrting causing the problem. We need to know what kind of vehicle and what tires to give any more help.

Reply to
clare

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