Technical Uneven tyre wear

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Technical Uneven tyre wear

David Bliss

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Jul 30, 2010
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Norfolk
My Panda Dynamic Eco 1.2 (just over 1 year old and 10000 miles on the clock) is showing uneven tyre wear on the O/S front inner and the N/S rear outer. This was noted down at the first service, two months ago, but the garage did not flag it up to me. I have just noticed the problem because the O/S front wheel started to squeal when I turned to the right, I also felt that the car tended to skip when going over uneven ground and I was trying to find out why.

I checked the tyre pressures (all correct), the tracking (dead straight ahead), the camber (just over 1 degree negative camber). I inspected the rubber suspension bushes (I am not impressed by the design of the suspension -it appeared to be designed to fail!)

I have owned Fiats for over 20 years, and the tyres have never worn unevenly. When I contacted my main dealer they did not seem surprised - just brushed it off as normal :cry:.

Any ideas about what is going on?
 
Tracking from the factory is in my opinion suspect.
I have had two Panda's from new, and both suffered serious premature tyre wear to the front. I had both, including my current 09 Panda (which ruined it's front set in 9k) re-tracked. The tech that carried out the task said the tracking was shameful for a 10 month old car which had obviously not been kerbed. Once re-tracked the tyres last 18k plus.
 
My 2007 MJ is now on it's fourth set of front tyres at 42K - all wear off bald on the inner shoulders whilst there's still about 3-4mm of tread on the outer.
Wheel alignment has been checked twice at dealers under warranty and o.k'd.
Being the suspicious type I've also had it checked twice by independents - first time just tracking, second time full alignment check. All sadly came back as within manufacturers tolerance.
FWIW, the original Conti's didn't last any longer than the cheaper makes I've used since.
:(
 
My 2007 MJ is now on it's fourth set of front tyres at 42K - all wear off bald on the inner shoulders whilst there's still about 3-4mm of tread on the outer.
Wheel alignment has been checked twice at dealers under warranty and o.k'd.
Being the suspicious type I've also had it checked twice by independents - first time just tracking, second time full alignment check. All sadly came back as within manufacturers tolerance.
FWIW, the original Conti's didn't last any longer than the cheaper makes I've used since.
:(

Blimey! My 500 is on original tyres @ 14k miles and they've worn pretty evenly across the tyre and the tread depth is about 5-6.5 mm so I'm expecting around 30k miles from the full set if I rotate them which I have been doing. Strangely there haven't really been many complaints from 500 owners about uneven tyre wear.

Sadly for the rear tyres there is no adjustment for toe or camber so nothing can be done about the rears. Wonder if pressures are too high or too low?
 
Really doesn't sound right to me? That many tyres in such a short time.

My Panda 1.2 (on 13s) had both front changed at 60,000 kms (37K miles) and rear pair shortly after. Seemed like pretty good all round wear. Tracking was only checked on mine when I replaced the front tyres. A good time to have it checked and it was perfect. But I do always check my tyres for damage, punctures and pressure.

4 sets of front tyres in only 42K miles? That does not sound right at all.

I guess most here are on 14s, rather than 13s like me.
 
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My partners 54 plate 1.2Dynamic is now on its third set of front tyres - the deasler fitted some cheap ones when we bought it at 17k miles, and we replaced those with Pirelli P3000s approx 5 months ago.

Last week we replaced the original rear ContiEcoContacts (at 47k miles) - the offised one still have about 2.5mm left across the tread, but the nearside one was almost bald on the outer tread blocks(still 1.6mm at the wear indicator) and 2.5mm across the rest of the tyre.

New P3000s on the front, slightly older P3000s moved to the rear so tyres good for at least another 20k miles :D
 
Really doesn't sound right to me? That many tyres in such a short time.....4 sets of front tyres in only 42K miles? That does not sound right at all.
My thoughts exactly, but as everything appears to check out ok and the car's driven sedately, there's not much I can do except perhaps part-ex earlier than planned. (We usually just run our cars for 10 or more years or until knackered...)
The last tyre dealer mentioned they'd seen a few Pandas with scrubbed-off tyres, also a friend in a motor factors said their fleet of Doblo vans also suffers from similar wear, but doubtless they get driven a bit more enthusiastically....
 
in Telford there are rather alot of round abouts which ever way you go and its not very good on the tyres, i do give the car the beans every once in a while

well my MJ is just over halfway on the front n/s tyre and the o/s following closely and im only at around 5,500 miles :p

Ash
 
A lot will depend on the use of the car - lots of town driving, roundabouts and car parking (scrubbing tyres) will reduce the life compared to lots of open road/motorway driving. Expalind why the elderly guy who had the car in shrewsbury originally got about 17k from the fronts and then we got over 20k miles (some urban but plenty of a road driving) from the cheapo ones the dealer fitted.



Checking the tyre pressures regularly is adviseable - from recollection we run the fronts (155/80/13) at 2.0bar which is above the normal 'light load' setting from Fiat (1.8Bar).
 
batman_threadres.jpg


well having the two front tyres replaced tomorrow as the tread is all over the place and the continental contact "3" are no longer available, all at the grand mileage of 6566!

lowest point was 2mm so im just going to get them done now as at this rate they wont last long at all

Ash
 
well having the two front tyres replaced tomorrow as the tread is all over the place and the continental contact "3" are no longer available, all at the grand mileage of 6566!

lowest point was 2mm so im just going to get them done now as at this rate they wont last long at all

Ash

Get your front toe checked at the same time.
 
Purchased my Panda July 07 and today had to buy new front tyres for the second time, thats 3 sets in under 4 years! Tracking checked each time and found to be correct. Only done 27,000 miles in total. At this rate it will be a new set of tyres every year. Not a good advert for Fiat
 
Just had two new tyres fitted and the tracking checked at ATS..
Found them to be very good as you can see them adjusting the tracking on the digital screens.. I had really bad tyre wear on the rear due to the tracking being a long way out!
 
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