un even tire wear, BAD
 

Hey. On my Yokohama Geo's AT, front tires are crazy. Every other lug is different. for instance, one is 1/2 inch, next one is 1/4 inch, next one 1/2 and so on. and it does that across the entire tire. It causes a ton of vibration.

I have 35k miles on them and i have a 50k mile free replacement. I was curious as to if that would be considered a defective tire. Its only on the front two but I was thinking if they were defective i could swap out for 4 new bigger tires, for a little more cost. Does anyone know anything about this and if these tires would be considered defective. The un evenness is very noticeable as well. Thanks. Kyle

Probably wouldn't be concidered defective. You could try. Usually this is an alignment, shocks, not rotating the tires problem. Some vehicles that are full-time 4x4 do it all the time.

I would get it aligned first bad ball joints can cause weird wear on tires I would lift it up and check your upper ball joints and lowers.

It is called "cupping". Usually not covered on the tire warranty because it is caused by a component on the vehicle. It could be a bad ball joint, bad shock, bad tie rod end, bent rim, not rotating, and the list goes on.

You could always go in and see if they could pro rate it out for ya.

My BMW did that on 2 sets of tires, then I had an alignment done, and they wear even now. The cupping makes for a very noisy ride, my mud tires on my truck were quieter than the cupped Z-rated street tires on my BMW.

I just noticed that as well on my front. I plan on getting the alignment done as soon as a get a motor back in it, bit let me know if they prorate you at the tire shop or not. I am at only about 20-25K miles on them.

I just got back from trying to have mine aligned, and they told me I needed new idler arm and pitman arm, mine was having the same prob, HTH

Updated w/ research
 

Found out that these tires will commonly cup on the front if not rotated a lot. I have only rotated mine once in the last 1.5 years and that was over a year ago. People get around this problem very well by just doing the rotation, which I plan on doing immediately and then just keeping up with it. I have never had a tire that needed rotation like this, but I have never had a tire perform in all weather the way these do either. Tread life goes a bit fast, but it does have a warrenty, which I will be using to get new ones at a prorated cost. Then I will make sure they get rotated quite a bit. Hope this helps and if anyone is wondering, for all intense purposes I blame myself for this problem and still promote this tire for performance on/off road in mud/snow/water. They really do well!

I have made a habit of rotating the tires when I change the oil, every 3000 miles. It is faster to rotate them myself anyway, than to drive down to the tire store and wait for them to do it.

No kidding! I am taking it to them this time because I want to get them balanced as well... next time I will do it myself with the oil like you said.

hey mt goat, do you torque em to spec or just about what feels right?