Inside front tire wear.

[Binderman]

Had to replace the 98 burb so the wifey found a clean 2X O7 with factory 20's. It has less than 50,000 miles on it and is on its second set of tires I would guess. I noticed the rear tires (which have been rotated at some point) show wear on the inside edge of both tires. Now I know the camber is out of specs, but this seems to be an inherant problem with the later model trucks. I drive a 09 at work and since new it has wore the inside edge of the front tires. Also three of my co-workers drive late model Burbs/Tahoes/Yukons and they too show this same pattern.

My guestion to the board is what have you done to fix the issue. Factory alignment specs arent correct obviously so whats is the fix? More positive camber when doing the aligment? Aftermarket alignment "kit"?

I am throwing out some thoughts here, but could added load be it from internal weight (occupants and gear) or outside forces being mainly down forces on the massive front end be part of the cause?

My 98 has nearly 200k miles on it and it never wears tires. What has changed?

Help me save a grand worth of tires when the time comes.

Sorry for the LENGTHY first post.

THANKS ALL!!

[LEEVON]

The camber seems to easily lose adjustment. If you do any work on the front suspension you'll see what I mean. It gets worse with lowering, lifting, bigger tires, etc. There is a camber lock-out kit that solves the problem, can't think of the manufacturer right now but I had one on my first '08.

[Bus Ted Knuckle]

Leevon is absolutely correct. I will add this:

These trucks DO come from the factory out of alignment. I have seen it several times on this newest generation of trucks. Most people do not pay attention to tire wear, so the original owner of your truck may never have known or cared it was out of alignment.

[N2TRUX]

Welcome to the forum Binderman.


It's a big issue. I put the factory 20's on a my 06 Silverado when I sold it. I put a fresh set of 22's on my 09 Sierra. I rotate tires every 5k and all was good until 20k. I noticed the inside of both front tires were worn excessivly since my last rotation. I decided to get as much use as I could so I ran them till the cord started showing. At 35k I replaced two tires and rotated them all around. The two that have been on the rear of truck all this time still look new.

In also had a 4 wheel alignment done at the same time. The truck drives so much better, and tracks like new. It is clear that the alignment made a huge improvement. I have no doubt that these trucks do not hold an alignment like the prior years.

[cparman]

I looked on Alldata, and the spec for Camber is 0 degrees. IF you are seeing inside edge wear, it can be too much negative camber, or too much toe out. At my shop we look for 0 camber and a factory setting for toe. If you are a bug about tire wear ( I am ) I would fiddle with making sure I had 0 camber, and a bit less toe out. My cars typically do not have tire wear issues because of this.

[Binderman]

Well same thing different alignment. I put $1002.00 worth of tire and an alignment on the Wifeys 07 in November. I looked at the front tires during the last oil change and noticed I have the same wear showing up on the new tires. Tires have 9145 miles on them since install and aligned.

Alignment sheet I was given shows LF camber @ -0.2* and RF camber @ 0.1*

Its going back to the same shop for a "look". Should I MAKE them push the camber to 0 as mentioned above? More maybe still?

I feel it needs more positive camber but how much is to much? I can tell at one point that the upper control arm eccentrics have been moved so someone has tried to correct the problem at some point with no success.

Please help as I can't afford another grand worth of tires this year.

Many thanks for any help!!!

[slammed1]

These trucks settle quite a bit on the frt suspension. When the frt suspension settles the camber gets more negative while the toe goes negative also due tot he camber change. Toe is the fastest tire wearing angle with camber being second and caster not really being a tire wearing angle.

I have done alignments and custom suspensions for right at 25 yrs and I always try to get 0.0 camber or a little bit positive and always toe the tires IN about 1/4" total. When the 99 model trucks first started coming out 2 local Chevy /GMC dealers were sending me their alignments cause their alignment guy couldnt figure out how to make the trucks get more than 20K out of tires.

Rotations are a must religously and I try to tell all my customers to rotate every 3000 miles for best results.Its well known that we all neglect to rotate on a reg basis as we are all too busy.