My 03 CRV(AWD) eats tires. The original set got only 18,000 and replacement with Michelin Hydroedge has 20,000 and time for replacement. I have rotated every 5K and kept pressure at 26 as recommended.
Is this a engineering problem or as dealer said it could be Florida roads have bits of shells and that causes premature wear. 90% driven in Fla and most local.
Do they wear out evenly, side vs. middle of tread?
Honestly, I would increase the tire pressure, to about 30 or 32, and that will increase the tire life alone.
I’m sure you get a nice, soft cushy ride with the tires set to 26 psi, but that runs the tires really hot if you do a lot of long distance highway driving in the hot Florida sun. Hot tires decreases their longevity.
Now, if they are wearing out on parts of the tread, and not evenly across, then you need to take your car to an alignment shop, and get it checked out.
BC.
You should also check out tirerack.com and see what CRV owners are saying about various tires.
Rotation and inflation are good, but what about wheel alignment?
They wear out evenly
I have a 2006 honda CRV with 30,000 miles, tires are not quite half worn. they are Bridgestone duelers . It calls for 29 lbs. air but I always keep at least 33 lbs. & the wear is very even across the tread. worse thing they are a very noisey tire, I can,t wait for them to wear out so I can try some quieter brand. Honda Bill
Evenly is defined as all wearing the same or does this mean all tires are wearing the tread across the width of the tire evenly?
The tire pressure at 26 sounds way low to me and this will wear the outer edges of the tires prematurely with the center possibly following right along with the edges.
Seashells are eating them up, huh? That’s a new one. 
Believe it or not, 26 psi is Honda’s recommendation for my '99 CRV, too. But I try not to go lower than 30 psi.
Yeah, those Duelers that come on the CRV are crummy. Unfortunately they last long, too! I guess they’re optimized for tread life and not much else.
Kind of like a restaurant where the food is bad, and they give you too much of it
i love the dealer’s suggestion that those diamond-hard seashells are causing premature wear… guess he figures you don’t remember where shells are on the scale of hardness from 9th grade geology- which is pretty soft. it never hurts to get the alignment checked if you’re getting uneven wear, but if the tires are wearing evenly across the board, front and back, maybe you’re a closet leadfoot or heavy braker?
26 psi is too low, in my opinion. I would go with about 32-35 psi. Reason? See Ford Explorer/Firestone fiasco. The main cause of those tire failures were most likely Ford’s recommendation to run 26 psi in those tires (Ford changed the recommended pressure to 30 during the recall, still too low for such a heavy vehicle, in my opinion). They wanted to improve the ride, but failed to realize that that is too little tire pressure for a heavy SUV. Tires run at too low a pressure will overheat and at best wear out rapidly or at worst fail with catastrophic results.
Another possible cause for premature tire wear is being an overly enthusiastic driver. Rapid acceleration, hard braking, speeding, and fast cornering will greatly accelerate tire wear.
I like the seashell theory. It’s completely ridiculous, but worth a chuckle. It’s funny to me to hear the mechanical theories of a car-illiterate person. Don’t feel bad if you bought it for a minute, the dealership should know their product. It doesn’t mean they do, it just means that they should.
2 thoughts:
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The first clue is that you’ve got an 8 year old car and average less than 5,000 miles per year. That is very low - which means lots of short trips, and that’s not good for tire wear. I suspect that is THEE largest reason for the rate of wear.
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Florida has problems with its pavement - and it isn’t the hardness of the limestone. It’s the fact that the seashells that make up the local limestone haven’t had enough time and pressure to break apart. You can not only see the shells, but when you crush them, they cleave with a sharp edge - and that tends to slice the rubber off tires. It takes quite a few years for new pavement to wear in, and then not too long after that, the pavement gets slippery from the abundant Florida rain, so they want to pave again. There are a few spots in the US known for pavement driven tire wear problems and Florida is one of them.
How many brake jobs have you needed in the 40K miles on the CRV? If you have needed 2 sets of new pads then your tire wear could be due to lots of braking and stop and go driving.