5th gen tire wear

[Edward Hands]

There is a very specific way to do an alignment on an air suspension truck. Are you sure your FS tech followed it? Truck must be set to alignment mode.

Next, what is it rubbing? If it's rubbing enough to wear the tires and for you to hear it, it has to be visible within the wheel well.

What size tires are you running? OEM rims and tire size?

On my next alignment I will be remaining in the driver seat. In part to verify that the truck is in alignment mode.

Bob will have to please confirm but I think what Bob was referring to was a the sound of the tire scrub. In the first post he said he could almost feel it in the steering wheel.
When turning, the inside tire turns at a much steeper angle as to achieve the tighter radius of the inner circle that it will follow. A lot of times these scrub angles do not coincide with the arch of trajectory that tire is on, causing increased wear. (I wonder if posi-trac contributes to this?)

Another reason that I want to be in the driver's seat, besides proper loading, is because once the alignment is finalized I would like to record how the specs change as I cycle through the the 5 different ride height modes and see if the alignment mode is actually closest to "normal" or "aero" mode.

 

[Bobwilla123]

I am running OEM tires. 275/55/20. I specifically told them to tell the tech that it must be in alignment mode. This can be accomplished through the radio settings.

 

[TC Retired]

I will say that is almost 2x the wear I have @ 26k. So I'd be inclined to believe it is due to alignment issues.

I would say those are about worn out. What pressure do you run in them?

And which Aero setting do you usually have it set on? Mine is left in Auto (height 2) almost all the time unless the snow is deep and then only until I get to plowed roads.

 

[TC Retired]

Just talked to the local dealer. He said we need a yearly alignment and these have no special process to align them. It is a maintenance item and no warranty coverage for the issue. Also, will have to talk to a Tire shop for the mfg's warranty.

Was not impressed with his answers...

Oh and that it's $100 for the service.

 

[Edward Hands]

Just talked to the local dealer. He said we need a yearly alignment and these have no special process to align them. It is a maintenance item and no warranty coverage for the issue. Also, will have to talk to a Tire shop for the mfg's warranty.

Was not impressed with his answers...

Oh and that it's $100 for the service.

This was my exact experience at the dealership back in 2020 when I had only 20,000 miles on it and the Bridgestone's were wore smooth on the outside edge (passenger side was worse). His print out clearly showed where it had excessive toe-in on a brand new truck!

 

[TC Retired]

This was my exact experience at the dealership back in 2020 when I had only 20,000 miles on it and the Bridgestone's were wore smooth on the inside edge (passenger side was worse). His print out clearly showed where it had excessive toe-in on a brand new truck!

Did both sides of the Truck have the excessive wear or just the Drivers?

Did the alignment stop the uneven wear?

 

[Edward Hands]

I will say that is almost 2x the wear I have @ 26k. So I'd be inclined to believe it is due to alignment issues.

I would say those are about worn out. What pressure do you run in them?

And which Aero setting do you usually have it set on? Mine is left in Auto (height 2) almost all the time unless the snow is deep and then only until I get to plowed roads.

37 PSI cold. I tried higher, but it felt like the tire sidewalls weren't doing their fair share of the dampening.

I agree, I am not comfortable with the condition of that Right Front but the other 3 look something like this:


Hence the reason Bob and I are in this thread.

Originally I did not rotate the original Bridgestone's. My reasoning was that this allows you to see exactly, without doubt, how each corner is wearing with no confusion. That's how I discovered that both fronts were wearing out the outer inch of the tread. Even more so on the RF.
So I bought two new Bridgestone's, put them on the back. Moved the evenly worn but still very good Bridgestone's to the front.
Where they too wore out in short order.
At the time I was making 900 mile trips to Carlsbad, New Mexico ever two weeks. So the Bridgestone's saw 80 MPH highway miles in aero mode pretty much exclusively.
I put 50k the first year I owned the truck...

 

[Edward Hands]

Did the alignment stop the uneven wear?

Well... as you can see. While it slowed it down I do not feel that the front end specs have ever been where I want them.
This second alignment was just a free check when installing the two new Bridgestone's. You know, one of those "you don't pay if we don't adjust" deals.
And for some reason they didn't save the "before" measurements...



Then this was done when installing 4 new Falken Rubitrek (which are great!) 275/60/20 still on the OEM rims.
And once again no "before" measurements were provided even though this was a year later and a different establishment...

Notice that again the toe-in is excessive. And on the RF to boot!

 

[TC Retired]

Just returned from Discount Tire where I had mine inspected. The first counter guy made mention that the OEM's use inferior tires.

Then talked to the Manger and he said that this has been a problem with Bridgestone's forever. They even called Bridgestone to find out if I could get any credit towards (having a sale right now) a new set of 4. They won't even discuss it until you get below 4/32s.

Mine are around 5 - 6 everywhere except the outer edge on all 4. I have consistently rotated them at close to 5k. However all 4 are down to 1/32 on that outer edge. Which I assume is all frontend wear. I hesitate to have it aligned because of the consistent wear on all other parts of the tires. All 4 are almost exactly the same.

My plan is to have them rotated side to side and see how they run. I figure I can get at least another 10 - 20k out of them. Then I think I will go with the Michelin Defender LTX M/2 for a better warranty and longevity. They claim this wear is a Bridgestone problem and that Michelin has solved it. Also that Bridgestone knows they have the problem but do not fix it.

I was also told that they are non-directional tire. So I'm going to do the diagonal rotation sometime soon.

 

[Edward Hands]

NVM

 

[Kickboxer]

This thread is agonizing. C'mon man, nobody is going to solve this
on a website.......................

 

[Edward Hands]

Bob, welcome to the forum.
Yours is a personal issue, tire issues like you say are not common, so don't place blame on the 5th gen. Ram. No different than any other vehicle.

This thread is agonizing. C'mon man, nobody is going to solve this
on a website.......................

If all this is too much for you just unfollow the thread.

 

[skates15]

I plan to get Michelin Defender LTX next year. I have the OEM Bridge stones and was not satisfied with the steering wheel jitter on a new truck, so I took it in and paid for an alignment at Discount Tires. They also said the Bridgestone were not the best, but in my case they fixed the steering jitter by removing Tar that was wedged between the tire treads.

I will look into the Falken, thanks for the tip on that.

 

[Lil' Rob]

I've got the original Falkens on my truck...roughly 28k miles...same problem with outer edge wear...I may have to replace mine soon...dealer has done all of my alignments.

 

[Bobwilla123]

Trying to get mine to the dealer next week. They said they want it for a couple days. First they are going to check the alignment. If good they said the want to look at all the suspension. When I talked to the originally they said the have not heard of this issue. Now the are curious with the first replacement at 39k. I will report back once they are done.