This weekend I am getting a full 4 wheel alignment done on my car. The back driver side wheel has some uneven tire wear due to the poor alignment. Should I just leave that tire there, have them rotated which would put that tire on the front? The uneven wear isn’t horrible, but I do feel it would be felt in the steering if I put it on the front.
I say leave it the back if it drives OK. I copied and pasted this from a post I just replied to.
Probably the alignment is out, specifically the camber for the back wheels. The camber is the wheel being vertical to the ground, if the tire leans one way or the other it will have positive or negative camber. The camber is not adjustable in some cars unless possibly shims or camber bolts are added to make the adjustment. Unfortunately this requires a little time and effort that the dealer may not be willing to do. Have the dealer perform the alignment, and demand to see the print out. You want the camber to be in the middle of the specified range. So hypothetically if the specs are -.5 to +.5 degree, I would not be happy unless its adjusted to within -.2 to +.2 degree. I think a lot of car manufacture alignment specified range for camber is to big, possibly to allow sloppy manufacturing tolerance .
How bad is it and how certain are you that the cause is poor alignment? More often than not rear tires become “bumpy” due to worn shocks/struts and/or worn suspension components.
If it’s bad enough to feel, then I’d replace it. If it has signoficant wear I’d replace the opposite tire as well. Once a bumpy wear pattern is existant in a tire it cannot be smooth again.
I just changed out my rear tires, even though the tread wasn’t fully worn out, because they wore “bumpy”. But first I changed out my shocks including the rubber mounting parts and checked everything out thoroughly. But once bumpy, always bumpy.
Well the dealership said everything looked fine and it was due to my poor alignment. I do know it does need it. If the shocks or strutts or something else were bad or going bad I figure they would have 'suggested" replacement at that time, and they didn’t.
a “bumpy” tire does not make full contact with the road. Therefore you lose valuable traction capabilities and can cause excessive wear on the suspension components.
Do yourself a favor and at the very least replace that tire.
To help keep this from occurring again try rotating more often and keep the vehicle in alignment
Just bought this van back in Aug, so was planning on doing that and will in the future, I am guessing the previous owners didn’t
I would replace the defective tyre. As for where to put the new one and if I would replace two or just one, would depend on the situation.IIRC the Sedona has a beam axle in the rear, I don’t think it would be necessary to get that aligned. Just doing the front should do.
Beam axles can be out of alignment, and in most cases shims can be installed to fix the alignment.