Posting for a friend of mine who lives in Plano, TX. He has a stock 2010 JKU Rubicon, and at 25K miles had to replace his tires in June of last year, and he replaced them with same size and type of BFGs that came on the Jeep. He took his Jeep into the dealership for an oil change about a month ago and they suggested he replace his 2 front tires due to excessive feathering wear that "looked like a roller coaster on the treads".

Enter the runaround...

Shocked because he only has 6K miles on them, he went to the tire store where he purchased the new tires, and they suggested that the shocks were bad. So he went back to the dealer, they told him the shocks looked fine, then after him hounding them, they said one of the shocks looked questionable and that they would replace them anyway (sounds suspect). Now he's back dealing with the tire shop, and because of the wear happening so soon, BFG gave him a 20% discount on new tires. His concern, like mine would be, is whether the root cause of this has been addressed due to the shocks, because now he's going to be out another $450~ to get the fronts replaced and doesn't want this to happen again in 6 months.

So a couple of questions...

1. Would shocks cause this type of rapid wear?
2. Is there anything else he should have looked at?

Thanks for the help everyone. He's asked me for some insight and I'm shocked that he would have to replace both front tires at 6K miles.

 

Shocks, alignment, balancing, all suspension bushings.

Also mts are designed for offroad mostly, and streets tend to cause them to cup or feather (same thing)
Must rotate and balance every oil change to cut down on it.

 

My 2011 did the same thing. You have to rotate the tires more often on a jeep. My tires looked like a roller coaster on the tread. It was recommended to rotate every 3 k miles. On my 11 I did it every 4-5. My 13 does not have this issue as I rotate them every 2000 miles which is probably excessive.

 

ball joints, tre's should be checked as well. My fronts were both feathering, turns out it was a combination of loose components. I fixed them all and the wear is evening back out thankfully.

 

Add front wheel bearings to the list. If the pre-load is too loose the tires will wear as described.

 

That happened to me on my 2010 Rubicon... M/T must be rotated often. My jeep is mostly a DD and the heat causes them to wear unevenly.

I rotate all five every oil change since i do it myself.

 

I have a 10 rubicon. I rotate tires every 3 to 5 thousand miles. I now have 32000 on the original MTs. There is still half tread left and nice and even. Sounds like alignment is off or very aggressive cornering.

 

What are TREs? Thanks everyone for the replies.

 

Tie rod ends

 

Many times this is the culprit