heal toe wear, fixing your directional stability and increase tire mileage.

I noticed that the tires were wearing in a saw tooth manner on my bridgestones ecopia 422, running at higher pressures and the wear was on the outside of the tread blocks; as opposed to the center, which would be typical for an over inflated tire. So I spoke to the technical support person at Bridgestone about the issue. in laymen's terms heal toe wear is due the the tread block initially compressing as it contacts the pavement, causing wear on the back side of the tread block (lug). The tires are made of a harder compound of rubber so when the tires roll there is compression as the lug hits the pavement. The rubber compresses and pushes out... You get the point. In one mile think of how much friction, compression and various forces are applied to the rubber treat, let alone revolutions of the tire.

So i was going to do a rear to front cross pattern? However that wouldn't alleviate the issue all together. So at his advice he said to first do a cross rotation. every wheel would change in a diagonal fashion. What this does is change the direction of the tire to compensate for the heal-toe wear, thereby rounding out the tire. Within 500-800 miles i noticed a decrease in noise, a smoother ride and much better steering inputs along with directional stability.

In a front wheel drive car you are asking a lot from the tires. Power, turning, braking, acceleration, steering, etc. So now that the wheels are rounder with no deviations in tread profile the car drives very straight. Before the Prius was scary, it would wonder and pull to one side. So i have a lot more confidence driving the car, without wandering into another lane, hitting the K-rail or obsessing about keeping it one lane. California freeways, have rain grooves and are sloped to each side and crowned in the center. So steering and maintaining directional control was amplified by the lack of proper road conditions.

So in summation, if you have heel-toe wear; do a cross rotation so all the tires change directional rotation. after 2k-3k of wear they should round themselves out, provided that your alignment is correct. After the tires are round you can then do a rear to front diagonal tire rotate. (so the fronts go straight back and there rears swap to the opposite front side. That way the tires see wear at every tire position on the car constantly changing direction and sides. So each of the four tire positions will hypothetically have different forces, stresses and wears, by rotating every 3k - 4k miles the tires will wear evenly and should go well beyond the longevity of the typical tire wear.

also do yourself a favor and get a tire gauge. this one is under $11 Accutire MS-4350B Setpoint Tire Gauge and i am very happy with it. seems to be quite accurate... so far so good. Incidentally, the four Los Angeles Toyota dealers had no clue what was causing the wear on the tires. Other than i have seen this on Priuses or TMDT (that model does that) answer. Both proper alignment shops gave me the "well you are doing everything right." Just (no) Tires said that it was overinflation and wanted to sell me new tires and Goodyear tires did a courtesy alignment checked and said that the toe was off ... Yah so what, turn the steering wheel slightly off center and now i have perfect toe once the tires are pointed straight.

I did call Santa Monica Goodyear tires back up and explained to the manager what was happening and how to correct the matter. He was nice otherwise i wouldn't have bothered calling back.

 

good point. it was late when i was typing. i will speak to my ring finger about the faux pas. mea culpa.