Taking the plunge. My journey as an O/O.

Well, I think I understand my odd tire wear issues on my drives now.

First, shortly after buying the truck, I had an out of round RF wheel that caused weird wear. It also caused pretty significant vibration.

I suspect that period of vibration caused the RF drive shock to start failing faster than the other three drive shocks.

I have been seeing step wear on the RFI inner tread for a while now, but was confused on the cause, since all four shocks are the same age, and I didn't think about all the extra work the RFI shock had to do with the out of round wheel.

However, at 750k miles now, on original factory shocks, all four inner drive tires are seeing step wear on the inner tread line.

This means that when I get home, I will be having all six shocks replaced.

While taking a look at the truck with me, the shop foreman here at the Whitestown TA also pointed out that my torque arms were not centered on their bushings. From what I have been able to see online, that's a problem for alignment.

So, today I am replacing both steers, both torque arms, doing a three-axle alignment, and having my drives rotated in an 'x' pattern to preserve direction of rotation, while changing which tires will be taking the excessive wear from failing shocks for the next couple weeks before I get back home for some time off.

I have decided to return to Bridgestone 6175 lb rating steers as well, since the Yoko 16 ply steers didn't really make any difference on my truck.

I am also trying the plastic balancing beads on my new steers.

When I get home, it will be DPF filter cleaning, new shocks all around, a full B service, and my right mirror heater is not working right. I am thinking about new wheel bearings all the war around too, but might not do that yet. By the time I get home the truck will have about 760k miles on it, almost all highway miles. I need to dig more into the expected lifetime of truck wheel bearings.

 

Here are the old torque arms.

 

I actually watch those. All of them are fine. I was not aware of how important the position of the torque arm bushings is for alignment, though, now that I do know, it seems pretty obvious.