Peterbilt/Michelin Tire Recall

Getting down to 6/32" on a car hauler steer is not bad at all. We usually have to pull them a little sooner that that due to edge wear. We've played with so many tire pressures and alignment settings to try to get rid of it, but can never totally eliminate it.

After a few years with playing on our 379 and 388/389 Petes. We ended up with 1/32" toe-in and 125 psi in the steers. On the rear, we set the front drive parallel to the steer and #### the rear axle with an extra 1/32" shim on the right side. We went from an average of 50,000 miles on steers to about 95,000 miles with the Michelin XZA. We also rotate steers at every oil change now (15,000 miles). We've run out 2 sets of Continentals that both went about 90,000 miles. Most of our fleet has been switched to the Continentals now and they are seem to be doing about the same.

Car haulers are tough to get good steer tire wear. I think 1 major issue is empty miles. We get more odd wear on trucks that get a lot of empty miles. The ones that run loaded both ways have very few odd wear issues. You just can't set them up good for both empty and loaded.

 

We use Equal. We tried centramatics on a couple of trucks a few years ago and didn't see any difference. I've never had much luck spin balancing unless it was done a few time over the life of the tire, which becomes a hassle.

I'm also very picky about steer tire mounting. Mount high side of tire run-out to low side of wheel run-out, then mount with the high side of tire run-out up. Tires always have more run-out than wheels, by having that up when you bolt it on, it lets the wheel hang on the centering tabs and that little bit of clearance is on the bottom to offset a little more run-out. Doing it this was usually gets us 0.030"-0.040" total run out. Some people call me crazy, but I do put a dial indicator on steers when I'm done. It only take a few minutes and I am not afraid to return a tire if it's not round, they cost way too much to accept poor quality.

 

Yes it does. The edge wear never really goes away, no matter what you try. Too much toe-in wears the outside edge, too much toe-out wears the inside edge, but car haulers wear both at the same time.

@sxdime The taller tires were better all around, cheaper, last longer and casing are worth something, but that 1.5" makes a big difference for us. Small cars are getting rare for us, trucks and SUV's are the hot items right now.