Here’s a weird tire wear vs pressure issue

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My daughter has a 16 Toyota Rav with OEM tires. We've kept the tire rotation around 6k +- miles . The car has around 40k miles. She said the fronts were wearing on the outside and inside more and it was getting louder. I figured low air pressure even though I'd set them higher than the 32 on the door sticker. I check them and they're all 35-36. Right where I'd left them. Strange so we put them up to 40 for now and rotated them. Tires molding states they are capable of going to 50 PSI which seems a lot
I never was a fan of the door sticker settings preferring the higher end of the tire rating myself and never has a center wear issue since Elton John released Rocket Man so this is new to me. Should we set those to 45 in view of the wear so far or leave them 40. Weird
 
What's the stated tread ware rating on those particular tires? For example Michelin Latitude Tour HP were OE on some models and have a wear rating of 440 (ie. 44k miles).

Road composition, alignment, and driving style (swift cornering when making turns onto another street, into parking lots, into parking spaces) are also contributors. OE tires usually wear the quickest.

Also, inflating to the max cold pressure is a no-no. Just stick with pressure on the door or in the user manual as a guide.
 
Here's what is going on:

Steer tires tend to wear in the shoulders, and drive tires tend to wear in the center.

This effect is stronger than the pressure effect.

So having the front tires wear in the shoulders (and not the rears!) means that the tires aren't being rotated enough - and since the vehicle has 40K and the tires were supposed to have been rotated every 6K, that means they should have been rotated 6 times. Does that seem to be true? If so, then the place that is supposedly doing the rotation, isn't.

Also, short trips with lots of turns tends to aggravate the front tire shoulder wear. I'll bet that is partially to blame.
 
Originally Posted by CapriRacer
So having the front tires wear in the shoulders (and not the rears!) means that the tires aren't being rotated enough - and since the vehicle has 40K and the tires were supposed to have been rotated every 6K, that means they should have been rotated 6 times. Does that seem to be true? If so, then the place that is supposedly doing the rotation, isn't.

Also, short trips with lots of turns tends to aggravate the front tire shoulder wear. I'll bet that is partially to blame.


Hmm, my previous set of sumitomo HTRZ-IIIs wore the shoulders more than the center @ ~36-40psi, 99% highway driving with rotations every 5K miles (every OCI.) All 4 tires showed the same wear, although none of the wear was abnormal from toe/camber wear. I guess I should start marking the tires so I can tell if the dealer rotated the tires then.
 
tall vehicles plus higher profile tires are more susceptible to cornering forces. It's even moreso if there's braking while turning, as it pushes the tire sideways even more. Agree that some is driving habits. The brake+steering could also mean she isn't neccessarily going too fast; she might be braking "late," (old-man definition of "late").

If this is the case, frequent rotations wont do anything to make the tires wear consistently, it just means they will all consistently wear the outer edges at the same rate. If you were picky, you could have the tires flipped on each wheel to expose the inside to the outside, but I'd be more inclined to let it be and show her that her driving habits are doing this, and discuss the price of tires, and what it means to her down the road.
 
At 35-36 psi on a car spec'ing 32 psi ... it's the driver, not the inflation level. Hard corners wear the shoulders, period. Rotate, rotate, rotate ... or slow down !
 
tall vehicles plus higher profile tires are more susceptible to cornering forces. It's even moreso if there's braking while turning, as it pushes the tire sideways even more. Agree that some is driving habits. The brake+steering could also mean she isn't neccessarily going too fast; she might be braking "late," (old-man definition of "late").

If this is the case, frequent rotations wont do anything to make the tires wear consistently, it just means they will all consistently wear the outer edges at the same rate. If you were picky, you could have the tires flipped on each wheel to expose the inside to the outside, but I'd be more inclined to let it be and show her that her driving habits are doing this, and discuss the price of tires, and what it means to her down the road.
Flipping will do no good in this case, the post says they are wearing on both the inside and outside.
 
You are indeed correct there.

maybe there’s something else going on. Perhaps its toed out or has poor camber, in addition to hard turns? Or maybe she’s not at fault at all and it’s totally an alignment thing. worn bushings? Does it track true between hard acceleration and braking?
 
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