Tire Wear

[dspangler]

I am having the exact same problem. Running BF Goodrich Mud-Terrain T/A KM. Only the left front has this type of wear. Rotated tires and once again left front is worn.
4 wheel alignment done. Camber, toe and everything. Mechanic keeps telling me that with this aggressive tread I can expect wear like this. Then I ask this extremely well informed one, Why only on the left front? Same story.
Claims he inspected the entire suspension and found nothing.
By reading through this I understand this could be a number of problems. Bad Shock, Steering...etc.
Would it be best to take it to a 4WD expert rather than jumping from place to place paying $60 just to put it on the rack and look at it? Trying not to get ripped off here by them telling me that I have to replace the entire front end.

Doing a self inspection, could someone describe what i should look for in terms of damage or wear to any component?

[schwalby]

Dom agreed that the shocks were bad / going bad so he replaced both front ones. Only have had it back for a day but the ride home did feel a little smoother. With the LTBs though it is really hard to tell. You can go down the same road day after day and each time have it feel differently. I have real bad wear on the tires though so I am hoping to see them smooth out.

One thing I am going to do also though which may make it hard to tell if the shock was the issue is I am having the tires grooved. Doing this for two reasons. One hoping the added flex will help with a smoother ride and get more tire contact with the road. Also hoping this will gain me some traction on the trails since I now lost a "edge" on the lugs.

Going to try and get some pics of the tires up tonight, if I don?t forget again

[ZAEDOCK]

Josh, I would consider getting the off set balljoints at some point and bringing your camber out. Straight axle rigs are tough on tires and off road bias are expecially prone to abnormal wear on the street.

[Frank]

I would have thought you would feel a big tire jumping like that ,if the shock was bad. I have the adjustable upper eccentric in the C Joe was talking about for camber adj. Its the only way to adj. camber in a solid axle unless you bend things into spec. That print out didnt look all that bad . FjR68

[schwalby]

Joe / Frank : I will defnitly look into those. Happen to have a link? I suck at Google.

I think one of the reason I didn't feel a lot of tire jump is because there is no weight in the front end. There seemed to be tire jump from the factory. The only weight past the axle is the radiator and grill. I put a heavy heavy bumper on there plus an old heavy as hell Warn winch on and the front only drops a little less then a quarter inch

[schwalby]

Raising an old thread

Doing some research on something else I found an article stating I can adjust camber with adjustable control arms, which I have. This make sense? And how would I do it to fix my issue of the negative off camber on the one side?

Also just noticed something else on the report I posted, it says 1989 - 1995 YJ, I have a 2003 TJ.

Found this on Jeep Forum:

First off, according to my 03 TJ Factory Service Manual, here are the specs and tolerances:

Caster: 7.0 degrees +/- 1.0 degree
Cross caster: +/- 0.65 degrees
Camber: -0.25 degrees +/- 0.63 degrees
Cross camber: +/- 1.0 degrees
Total toe: +0.30 degrees (or +0.15 degrees per side) +/- 0.06 degrees
Thrust angle: +/- 0.25 degrees

(So you don’t have to look back at the other post) Mine

Caster (left) 6.3 (Right) 6.5
Camber (left) -0.6 (Right) -.04
Toe (left) .01 (Right) .00

So I am confused, even more so now.

[johnsxj]

You can adjust CASTER with adj. control arms (angle of upper/lower balljoints fore/aft of the axle).

Camber is the angle of tire top/bottom when looking at the face of the wheel. Your camber readings are within spec according to that post from Jeep Forum. According to the post, your camber can have a tolerance range of +0.38 to -0.88 degrees with a prefrerance of -0.25 degrees.

The only way to really change camber on a solid axle is to use offset ball joints (Moog does make them for Jeeps) or a tapered shim that gets installed between the bearing and knuckle (never seen them for the uni-bearing axles, just the old school spindle w/hubs)

The nature of the beast of bias ply softer compound mud tires is that they are gonna wear and wear funky. With 35" tires a little less Caster in the 4 to 5 degree range is usually prefered. And a bit more toe in to compensate for the mass of the tires pushing out while driving down the road (about 1/8" measured AT THE TREAD works)

Talk to Lou at Elias about it. He used to be an alignment machine tech back in the day (installing/calibrating machines)

[schwalby]

I had a feeling that the control arms wouldn't be able to adjust camber, that's why I checked. I even read the line in the article a couple of times to make sure I was reading it right.

The tread has started to smooth out now though with the new shocks.

Does Lou have an alignment machine in his shop? Wouldn't mind him check (adjusting) the Jeep if he does.

[johnsxj]

Yep, Lou does alignments. Think it's around $75.00