I have a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland 4x4 (diesel) with 52,000 miles, and one tire has been wearing on the outside edge, whereas the 3 other tires have worn normally.
I have rotated the tires at every oil change (10,000 miles, as per owner’s manual), but still, that tire wears out odd while the others wear normally. If I hadn’t rotated the tires, I’d expect the camber to be out on that corner, but with rotation, why would it keep wearing on the outside?
May be the wheel is tweaked? Air pressure is within spec and I’m very tight about it.
Do you mean the same tire continues to wear on the outside edge, independent of which corner it is positioned? If so, it pretty much has to be the tire or the wheel. Remove the wheel and check it visually on both sides for anything weird like missing wheel weights. Check the area the lug nuts meet up with the wheel too. Next put it back on and hand spin it, looking for signs of any wobbling, right/left and up/down. After that have the wheel balanced again. If it continues to occur best bet is to replace the tire, and if it still continues, replaced the wheel. There’s nothing else unusual about that wheel or that tire compared to the other three, right?
Yes, the wear continues on the same tire&wheel regardless of which corner it’s mounted on - that’s why I find it so odd. Are you suggesting it’s a bent wheel? I find it odd that a wheel would be bent from the factory - of course not impossible. Every time I got an oil change, I’d get a rotate & balance, and the shop is trustworthy.
I’ve never seen such an odd wear pattern on a regularly rotated tire. I know that 10,000 miles is long (5,000 would be better) but it’s still odd.
Also, the maintenance shop has never mentioned an out-of-round or tweaked wheel, which I think would be somewhat obvious on the balancer when it’s spinning.
You can see how wheels are made viewing the vdo link below. It’s a major undertaking and wouldn’t be unheard of for one to come off the ass’y line w/a defect.
Tire on the outside edge means too much positive camber or too much toe-in; all depending on which position on the car is the problem area.
Excessive positive camber often means the wheel is kneeled under a bit which can be due to a curb strike, large pothole, etc. As long as there is a problem on that corner the tires will continue to wear. An alignment would be the first step. If the camber is out quite a bit then odds are something is bent.
I’m at 53,000 miles on those tires, not amazing, not horrible. However, I do want to fix it right.
That being said, I do not know what corner it all started on - I noticed irregular wear on that one tire at 30,000 miles after 3 rotations.
The other issue is that this Grand Cherokee has an air-ride suspension, and the local shops and dealer does not seem to know how to adjust the camber on those air-rides.
This is, not to mention, their unwillingness to adjust the camber on any car - I had a helluva time finding a shop that would adjust the camber on a 2012 BMW 650i (this one was wearing on the inside of the rear tires).
Some suspension designs do not allow for camber adjustment. It’s not built into the design. It’s always possible to adjust camber one way or another, shims etc, but a shop would probably be reluctant to do that b/c of liability concerns. In other words the vehicle’s designers decided camber never needed to be adjusted for a reason. And it might well be b/c doing so would be unsafe.
I can’t say that I’ve ever done an alignment on a Jeep Cherokee at all mainly because I’m a so-called “import guy”. Near as I can tell camber, caster, etc is built in. Toe is the only adjustment.
It appears that minor adjustments may be made by shifting the cross-member but that will only gain 1/4 of a degree at most. That’s almost irrelevant.
There may be companies out there that offer kits to alter camber/caster and so on. This cana be cheap (cam bolts) or pricy (control arms).
I will still offer up the idea that this vehicle needs to go on the alignment rack to find out what’s going on. It’s very easy to damage a part (especially control arms) and either never know about it or by forgetting that there was a curb strike or pothole at one time.
I bought a high-end camber tool, I will check what’s going on shortly. Will be happy to report back.
It takes a heck of a whack to out the camber out, as far as I know (I hit a 7-8" curb in a Saturn SL2 and that whacked it bad!) This Grand Cherokee never saw any whacks, at least none anywhere near that bad!