steer tire suggestions

I'd leave the centramatics on take the other out. I always have my tires balanced with lead as well. The drives are wearing smooth like this, but they do appear to be wearing kind of quickly, I attribute that to the fact that they are Yokohama's. The last Yoko's I will ever buy. I went through several sets of steer tires having issues with weird wear. Tires with 9/32's that had to be replaced because of cupping on the shoulders. Keeping the pressure right and rotating every 30K miles or so, and I still had to replace them with 9/32's and only 110 to 120K miles. These were bridgestone and yoko steers. Come to find out a 14 ply tire is only rated for 12K lbs, who would have thought, I know very stupid of me not to know this. If I am 75K or more I will be a tad heavier than 12K on my steers. 12,100 to 12,300 pounds when full of fuel. Now this doesn;t sound like a lot but several tire salesmen told me that load after load, over time this could be causing my steer tire unusual wear patterns. So I upped the anty and went with a set of 16 ply Goodyear G399's this past december. So far I am loving these tires but they only have about 19K miles on them... At 50K is when the others starting wearing wrong... I will know for sure at that point.. My kingpins and everything is all good.. have you checked yours, jack the wheel up and have someone pry on it looking for any tell tale slop? I check that stuff weekly.. I did have a bad pitman arm that I had to replace but the old one, I always tightened it every week, so it never got real sloppy, dont think that was causing the wear.. So, what kind of weight do you run on your steers? perhaps you could slide the 5th back a notch or two, or, if that is not an option upgrade to 16 plys???

 

I always run the XZA3'S, have them balanced on a spin balancer and use centramatics as well. I always get 180,000 plus out of them. Michelin tires are vey expensive up front, but it has been my experiance that they last longer than their competitors tires. So in the end the cost per mile is the same or cheaper to go with the Michelin's. My last set of drive tires were the XDN's and I got 432,000 out of them before I pulled them off. I run centramatics on the drive axles and my trailer as well.

 

Rollin Coal, what you described is just about what I go thur to a 'T'. With the front axle always being over 12k with a heavy load, also the way my tires wear.. I usually run FS590 plus. The last king pin job I had the front axle off, bored and resleeved. It was suppose to be good. So now that it's time to replace the king pins, I'm going with new axle and pins, also doing the spring busings tie rods and pitman arm its got a little slack... I like keeping my gap a little close but I have thought of sliding back. Oscar I might just go with the XZAE3's after running these for a bit..

 

I have a W900 so I don't carry the weight on the steer axle that you guys do with your set back axles. So my mileage maybe unattainable for some. I have 1,111,729 miles on this truck and have never had to do anything to the front end.

 

Just bought a set of xza3+ will install this weekend at our yahrd. I will check record of last set and post mileage..

 

I have a 99 379 with two million miles plus....

 

You should be able to get alot of miles out of steer tires with a 379.

 

Most likely not the tire's fault...

 

So how are those G399's working out for you RC?

 

If you get a chance to update, would love to hear it. Bought a set of 14 ply 399's, they have about 60k on them & look like crap.
Aligned/balanced within 500 miles of install, but to be fair, new shocks were only 6 months old, so left them on. King pins/complete tie rod with ends & re-balanced.(alignment was checked & within spec at that point too) was 4 months or so later.

Left front outside is cupping & right side has all sorts of out of kilter look to it.

Will be replacing them around Memorial day time frame with remaining drives.

Are you getting that sort of mileage out of 14 or 16 ply XZA3's?