Excessive tire wear on toad

[stevet903]

I had the same problem on my Mini, and every shop that set the alignment said it was fine. The final shop actually took some quality time underneath the car and found that although the alignment was fine sitting on the rack, the rubber bushings in the front suspension were torn, and the rears soft. This allowed the suspension to move enough under load to produce toe-in, eating the inside of the tires. Find a shop that will set it up for an alignment, and then have them take a pry bar to push against the control arms, and then have a second person to push on the front and rear edges of the tires parallel to the ground (a person on each side trying to push the front or the rear of the tires together). Most shops have a computer screen that they can watch while this is going on and it should show that something is worn. It doesn't take much movement to cause a problem.

[Gary Carmichael]

Thanks Steve, I just put a new set of Michelin tires on and will try for another alignment and check for worn bushings. Thank you Gary

[Jon Wehrenberg]

We have towed a Dodge Raider (a Mitsubishi Montero 4WD Jeep type vehicle), a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Dodge Ram 1500, and a Hummer H2. The Raider about 40,000 miles, the Jeep Grand Cherokee in excess of 200,000 miles and 10,000 miles or so on the Hummer and the pickup. None of the vehicles exhibited unusual tire wear and none appeared to suffer from towing.

I do rotate tires with every oil change or about every 4000 miles. I do run my hand over the tires and look for evidence of an unusual wear pattern. The Jeep got 90,000 miles on one of the sets of tires and it was towed 4 miles for every mile it was driven so towing did not appear to make any difference on tire life.

In all our travels I had one blowout, on the Jeep. I do not know the cause because I saw no foreign object in the tread that would have caused a loss of air pressure and the tires were checked about 400 miles prior to the blowout for tire pressure.

I suspect if towed vehicles have excessived wear or unusual wear patterns it is probable the cause is with the toad. I do know keeping the brakes on the toad locked will create a flat spot.