Strange front tire wear..what's wrong?

MrCoupe · Post by **MrCoupe** » 06 Jun 2005, 21:53

First off, my apologies if this is a common problem and I missed it. I searched the archives but couldn't locate any threads addressing similar problems.

I bought my 96 850R in December and have been enjoying it ever since. In December, all tires were nearly new on the car. Since then I've put around 5K miles on it.

I'm now very concerned about front tire wear patterns I'm noticing. On the driver's side, the outside edge (outer-most 1/2") is extremely worn, nearly to the cords, the passenger side tire is showing heavy wear on the outside edge also, but not as badly as the driver's side...at first I thought it must just be poorly aligned...then I noticed extreme wear on the inside edges of the tires also, except this time it was the passenger's inside edge showing wear nearly to the cords...? I can't imagine this is an alignment issue since both the inside and outside edges are showing extreme wear. I've never seen anything like this before, the rear tires are in great shape.

Before I hand the car over to a shop to inspect things I thought I'd see if anyone here has any ideas or has experienced anything similar. If it helps any, I do seem to be experiencing some sort of rattling coming from the front when making slow, tight turns into parking lots etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

Jot · Post by **Jot** » 07 Jun 2005, 07:16

Do you turn corners at high speed? Are the tires properly inflated? Low pressure will wear tires on the edges.

MrCoupe · Post by **MrCoupe** » 07 Jun 2005, 13:58

Those are good questions. I checked the pressures this morning suspecting the same thing but they are all around 30-32psi. Maybe a bit low, but I doubt it's enough to cause this. As for taking corners hard...this is daily driver, I try not to drive the car very aggressively. The fact that the inside edge of one side and the outside edge of the other side are showing the extreme wear really has me guessing?

I'm inclined to up the pressures and see what happens but I suspect something else is causing this.

Jot · Post by **Jot** » 07 Jun 2005, 18:20

Try a four wheel alignment rather than just the front

holler1 · Post by **holler1** » 13 Jun 2005, 19:44

Front tires on my v70 wear the same way. The only way I have found to slow the wear is to raise the pressure to about 40 psi.