BigTexJKU

Hello all!

I am new to this forum. Had to take a break from the Jeep life for awhile. Sold my baby to put a down payment on a house but kept my wife's JKU. The JKU Sport is a 2015 we bought new and I bought the Rubicon wheels and tires from a customer of mine when he upgraded. I rotated them once after about 6k miles. After a couple thousand more miles the front tires started to wear weird. I took them off for now and as I'm thinking about the situation I am wondering if the tires have a directional tread and I got lucky with the two back tires going in the right direction. I am at work and cannot look at the tire to see if it is marked on the sidewall. The description of the tire has KM-DT and I would like to know if the "DT" part means directional tread. If they aren't a directional tread I have no idea how the lugs wore the way they did. The front part of the lugs are taller than the rear part now. So when we drove it with them on there was a lot of noise and vibration in the steering wheel. If the answer is that they have a directional tread I will stop being an idiot and put them on the correct way when I get home. If they are not a directional tread can anyone give me some insight as to why they are wearing this way?

Thanks

PsychoCupcake

I think I'm this scenario, pictures are worth a thousand words. Post up some pics!

Machoo

Hey there. This is normal for the stock Rubicon tires if they are not rotated very frequently. I rotate mine about every oil change or between 3,000 and 5,000 miles. I had a set from a friend that didn't rotate often and they wore the same way. I get how confusing it is because when you look at the tires it seems almost impossible that they can wear the way they did. Tire shops advice to me was move the front ("bad") tires to the back so that the high spots are facing forward. This will wear them down even. Once the tread is even you can then rotate tires as normal after that and more frequently. Worked like a charm.

I will say that I always still had a slight vibration from them from that point on. It wasn't bad but when I got new tires I really noticed a difference. So, if they aren't too bad you can try the trick above and see if it helps.

BigTexJKU

It is hard to capture the tread wear in the pic but here is the best attempt. Look at how the tread depth is higher on the left(front) side compared to the right(back) side of the lug.

BigTexJKU

If I remember correctly the high spots were facing forward and they still wore out in this impossible manner. I'll try what you recommended.

ronjenx

I have stock Rubicon tires on mine. If I don't rotate every 3 or 4 thousand miles, they wear the same way. The alignment has always been good.
Even with frequent rotations, they will be noisy for a couple hundred miles until the lugs wear into the new position on the Jeep.

I got 76,000 miles on the first set, and have about 60,000 miles so far on this second set.

rob_engineer

I posted almost the exact same thread as yours a couple of years ago. It's called cupping. It happens on the front with these tires. Rotate front to back and all will be good. Until the next time. Then rotate front to back and all will be good again. Nothing wrong with your Jeep or tires. Just the nature of the beast. Less aggressive tires such as duratrac has not been experiencing the cupping.

ronjenx

Are you sure it's cupping and not feathering?

rob_engineer

tomato, tomahto. You could be correct. I've called it cupping. Maybe scalloping. A quick google search, there's multiple names people use for this issue. All I know is it looks bizarre. Can't era my head around why the tread pattern would look like that. I assume is must be related to the actual structural design underneath each tread that applies uneven pressure on that chunk during normal driving.

ronjenx

Feathering is one edge of the tread lug being lower than the opposite edge. It's like running your hand over feathers. One way it feels OK. The other way it feels rough.
It's often caused by improper toe, but that's on regular passenger tires. On heavily lugged tires, it happens with good toe, but being steering tires, the lugs wear differently from the rear tires.

Cupping is a different type of wear, usually caused by tire imbalance. Running the hand over the tread, it will feel like smoother highs and lows over a longer distance than the distance between the tread pattern pitch.