Tire Wear On the Outside

[redwagon04]

The tires on my XC70 are wearing a bit more on the outside inch of the tire. The dealer says this is normal, and at 33k miles, I'll be getting new tires soon anyway.

Does anybody else's XC70 wear like this? I'd hate to buy new tires if there is an issue.

[bouvier]

We have about 40K miles on our '03 and the tire wear is even. At last check it looks like they will go another 10K miles. I suggest that you have the dealer check the wheel camber and tire balence.
Camber
Definition: The angle between the plane of a wheel's circumference and a vertical line, measured in degrees and minutes. The tops of a car's wheels tilt inward when the camber is negative, outward when it is positive.

Bouvier

[dlr97]

The XC70 (and in fact most street cars) doesn't have optimal front dynamic camber when cornering. This results in the outsides of the front tires wearing more than the center and insides. If you do a fair amount of cornering (city driving and twisty highways), especially if you take corners fairly hard, you will see this on your tires. More frequent rotation helps to minimize this.

The cars I autocross have always shown this kind of wear, as you would expect. Tires can be flipped on the rims to get the worn side on the inside, but I rarely bother.

[redwagon04]

Thanks for the feedback.