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tire wear

Wes Harden

Wes Harden

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so my 01 2wd gmt800 with torsion bar suspension, is wearing the front tires poorly. I have inspected the front suspension and steering components, replace the worn bump stops, and an idler that had a small bit of wear, the rest of it is tight and good.
I was blaming the tires, but recently I saw on FB some one saying this typical for a gmt800 with torsion bars. Is this true ?
I have 25kish miles on these tires and have rotated them at least 7 times, to even out the wear and cut down on the low frequency noise. I was about to drop some coin on some aftermarket control arms and steering but if this is a design flaw then I'll just keep rotating tires.
 
My 2002 mini blazer wore the outside of the front tires like that. It was torsion bar. I replaced control arms, ball joints, tie rod ends and stabilizer bushings along with shocks. It made it better but didn't cure it.
 
Wes Harden said:
I'll get pics. Wear is ragged feather on the outside lugs inside and out side. I run @40 psi in the fronts even though they are e rated tires
Click to expand...
First thing even E rated tires you don't want to run more than 40 psi unless it's loaded all the time.
Second my 98 suburban and my 97 jimmy both are torsion bar and I never wore tires unevenly until last month on the suburban and it was from bad upper control arm bushings.
A bad adjustment on those will wear badly.
Now the ragged feathering is a sign of bad shocks. Are yours old and worn out?
 
shocks I am used to seeing more of cupping feathering, that said my shocks are factory air ride. unobtianium atm. my camber and toe are good, checked recently. Caster doesn't cause tire wear.
 
Wes Harden said:
shocks I am used to seeing more of cupping feathering, that said my shocks are factory air ride. unobtianium atm. my camber and toe are good, checked recently. Caster doesn't cause tire wear.
Click to expand...
Qell i don't know where your issue is but it's not the design of torsion bar suspension because mine are fine for years then when there was damage things got bad.
Also I remembered I have a 2003 avalanche.
I believe that is a gmt800 and it has some worn out tires even wear front and rear.
Either they were rotated often or no issues with the suspension
 
There's nothing inherent to torsion bar suspension to wear the tires like that. You must be thinking of TTB! Usually a bad ball joint or control arm bushing will wear just one side of one tire or one side of both. To wear inside and outside implies that it had a degree of freedom to steer. That's usually a tie rod end, idler arm or steering arm, but weird things do happen. The 1500 and 2500 suspension parts are entirely different, but the basic design is the same. If you were at the wrong ride height, the camber would be out of spec.

I had a camber bolt come loose once, so one of the control arm bushings could move. Sitting still, the camber and toe measurements were correct, but whenever there was a bump, the whole tire would shift outward like big positive camber. I'm just saying it may be doing something you're not aware of. Checking everything with prybars can be helpful.
 
Wes Harden said:
I'll get pics. Wear is ragged feather on the outside lugs inside and out side. I run @40 psi in the fronts even though they are e rated tires
Click to expand...
The more I think about this, is I’d lean on underfinflated wear and it’s scrubbing hard on turns cause it doesn’t maintain shape.
 
obijuank5 said:
The more I think about this, is I’d lean on underfinflated wear and it’s scrubbing hard on turns cause it doesn’t maintain shape.
Click to expand...
40 is not under inflated for an E rated tire.
I run mine at 35 front and 40 rear.
Been doing this for 20 years and all wear great.
I just had my first bad wear this year and it was a warning that I had a problem
 
Blue85 said:
There's nothing inherent to torsion bar suspension to wear the tires like that. You must be thinking of TTB! Usually a bad ball joint or control arm bushing will wear just one side of one tire or one side of both. To wear inside and outside implies that it had a degree of freedom to steer. That's usually a tie rod end, idler arm or steering arm, but weird things do happen. The 1500 and 2500 suspension parts are entirely different, but the basic design is the same. If you were at the wrong ride height, the camber would be out of spec.

I had a camber bolt come loose once, so one of the control arm bushings could move. Sitting still, the camber and toe measurements were correct, but whenever there was a bump, the whole tire would shift outward like big positive camber. I'm just saying it may be doing something you're not aware of. Checking everything with prybars can be helpful.
Click to expand...
That's what I'm saying.
He just hasn't found the problem.
 
imiceman44 said:
40 is not under inflated for an E rated tire.
I run mine at 35 front and 40 rear.
Been doing this for 20 years and all wear great.
I just had my first bad wear this year and it was a warning that I had a problem
Click to expand...
That’s not what I was trying to say. And not all LRE tires behave the same. The weight to PSI ratio would suggest it’s well within acceptable range but the wear pattern is suggesting under inflation.
Belt edge feathered wear and center ribs normal lends itself to under inflated steer tires.
 
obijuank5 said:
That’s not what I was trying to say. And not all LRE tires behave the same. The weight to PSI ratio would suggest it’s well within acceptable range but the wear pattern is suggesting under inflation.
Belt edge feathered wear and center ribs normal lends itself to under inflated steer tires.
Click to expand...
I get what you are saying but I find it hard to believe it's under inflated.
The test would be the chalk test to rule out the pressure issue.
I think it might be a bearing that is loose causing a little wobble or like blue said some play in a tie rod.
Mike has some more digging to do I guess
 
obijuank5 said:
That’s not what I was trying to say. And not all LRE tires behave the same. The weight to PSI ratio would suggest it’s well within acceptable range but the wear pattern is suggesting under inflation.
Belt edge feathered wear and center ribs normal lends itself to under inflated steer tires.
Click to expand...
By the way I know not all tires react the same with same pressures but I have used about 15 different tires in the E rated group and anything above 36 was not under inflated.
I did have some recently that wore out the middle more when I had them at 40 psi for 2 years without too much weight.
So yeah some are softer and are stiffer
 
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