I wonder if anyone can help identify a possible cause for tyre tread wear the likes of which I have never seen before?

My car is a leased 2017 Fabia Monte Carlo estate with 17” wheels - done 48000 miles.

The tyre pressure monitoring system picked up a reduction in pressure in the front right tyre so I checked it around the tyre - treads looked ok with no foreign objects so I equalised all pressures then re-set the monitor.Less than a week later I had the same thing happen - something obviously wasn’t right so I thought I’d better do a more thorough check.  Crawling round under the front of the car I

noticed the inner edge of the tyre on the affected wheel was badly worn so I took it off to put on the spare.  Once off the car I could see that the inner edge of the tyre was very badly worn which had caused a hole which was slowly leaking.  I have never seen wear like this before and neither has the guy at ATS.  The tyre is worn on the very edge of the shoulder but is not even around the tyre.  Wear is much more pronounced around about half of the circumference.  It does not look inflation related as the outer shoulder is not badly worn.  It could be pot hole related i.e. hitting a pot hole has knocked the wheel out of alignment (camber?) but as I said the wear is not even around the circumference.

Is this a tyre manufacturing fault I wonder.  It is a budget tyre (Zeta Alventi) which I had put on when VW Finance refused to renew a punctured tyre that was not repairable, despite having tyre cover.  The tyre has done approx 35000 miles and performed fine when on the car such that I would have happily bought Zeta brand again.  What I am trying to ascertain is whether this is a tyre fault or a car fault.  If it’s due to a poorly manufactured tyre that will steer me away from budget tyres in future (excuse the pun).  If it’s car or steering geometry related I could do with knowing what so I can get ATS or the dealer to make the relevant adjustments.  The car is due to go back in less than six months and I don’t want the next owner to experience the same problem, which could in all seriousness cause a bad accident if the tyre were to blow at high speed.

I am aware that some Skodas have suffered excessive inner tyre wear - is this an issue in the Fabia III?

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Welcome.

Like you say possibly pot hole damage.

 

When were the tyre pressures last checked and TPMS reset before the warning.

 

I assume the ATS Euromaster Tyre Centre employee was newly started as a tyre & exhaust fitter to have not seen similar previously.

 

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Have you had the Alignment and tracking checked and adjusted if needed?

I last checked tyre pressures beginning of April.

 

ATS guy may well have been a newby!

 

New tyres due to be fitted on Tuesday so I shall find out then whether VW Finance have approved alignment check / adjustment.  One would hope they have approved an alignment check otherwise I could need more tyres before the end of the lease!

 

The other front tyre also shows excessive wear to the inner edge but nothing like the other one,

 

 

If the Tyre has lasted 35,000 miles and only just starting having trouble I’d say you’ve done very well for a budget, especially on the front. 

 

 

Edited 13 June, 20205 yr by matthall94

I do mostly motorway miles which is fairly easy on the tyres i.e. not lots of cornering, which makes the wear even more surprising.

@Mickhill  To be honest i am surprised that you are surprised that the tyres have to be changed, and doing lots of motorway miles means you might easily go over objects and do what you did.

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So what pressures do you set the tyres at?

 

ATS Euromaster do Free Tracking checks, and then obviously adjusting if needed costs.

 

Tell the call handler at VWF it is safety related, yours and other innocent road and pavement users and what is the point of Tyre Insurance if they penny pinch on tyres and they go on a mis-aligned car.

 

Then if i was doing high miles which i have and the Skoda / Seat Tech at the 1st service @ 20,000 miles said the car needed an alignment check but they do not do it &  Motability agree and the Kwik fit fitter said bog off i would go across the road to my friends at ATS Euromaster, get the alignment done, pay and get my own Winter Tyres on, and i sent the Alignment Invoice to Motability to get a refund and have them get onto Kwik fit.

 

So that was what i did. 

& when i was handing back the car last year, i put the ditchfinder tyres back on. (OEM are Continental ContSeal as the car has no spare wheel.)

Tyre wear noted at the MOT.  

Arnold Clark are selling that car with near 4 year old inner edge worn tyres still on.

 

Edited 13 June, 20205 yr by Roottootemblowinootsoot

I’m not surprised that the tyres need changing.  In fact I am surprised how well both the original tyres and the budget tyre have lasted.  What I am surprised about is the frightening excessive wear to the inside edge of one tyre and I’m trying to get to the bottom of the cause so I can stop it happening again.  I suppose you need to see the tyre in the flesh to see how bad it is.  It looked absolutely fine when viewed from the side and tread depth looked ok and even across the whole width.  It was only when I crawled on the floor and viewed the tyres from the inside that I could see the horrendous wear.

@Mickhill  

My thoughts on getting to the bottom of it is to think the normal things that need thinking.

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What pressure were they set at in April, and up to April, and could you have been running with a few psi low and no TPMS warning and the Alignment / Tracking may be out and needs checked.

 

Regular tyre checking should not just be the pressures and outside tyre wall, you have to get down and look or get under or take tyres off and maybe move front to rear etc over time and miles.

 

Top 2 pics from other Briskoda threads, not my tyres.

Rears commonly do this, and moving to the front can be dangerous when they do go out of shape, 

but many Tyre Fitters and Fitting Centres say they can only put the new on the rear and move the rears to the front.

(Plenty heated debate threads on that one on this and other forums. COSTCO Tyre fitters..might be mentioned!)

 

Bottom tyres are ones of mine that a muppet kept telling me the TPMS was coming on but never bothered to get down and check the tyres to see why one was going down.

That would be the self tapper on the inner edge of the Dunlop Sport Maxx with wear.

Edited 13 June, 20205 yr by Roottootemblowinootsoot

I have always set to 2.2 bar using a digital gauge for accuracy.  2.2 bar is what is recommended for the car when lightly laden - it’s usually only me in the car.

When I do a check every couple of months I have usually only been finding the pressures to have dropped by about 0.2 to 0.3 bar.  It was usually the affected tyre that had dropped the most i.e. 0.3 bar which I wouldn’t normally have thought would be significant.  However as these are 40 profile tyres with a very pronounced square shoulder, perhaps 0.3 bar is sufficient to cause outer edge wear.  What puzzles me is the outer edge isn’t worn anywhere near as bad.

I have now increased the pressures to the “eco” setting of 2.5 bar which has made an already hard ride even harder but I have noticed an improvement in economy.  When taking it steady I have been achieving 60mpg according to the computer, when the best I was regularly getting at 2.2 bar was 52mpg.

What makes you think that your digital guage is accurate?

 

I have many and they all give different readings, some of them differ if you take 2 consecutive readings of the same tyre.

 

The only ones that I trust are my PCL and an American motorsport one and I still check them against each other, the old style Dunlop/Romac pen style pressure guages always seem to remain accurate or stop working altogether.

 

Never known quite how they work, some Googling coming up!

Thanks for all your input.  It certainly shows that there are so many variables to consider that it ain’t easy getting to the bottom of this.

I always thought I was pretty good at looking after my vehicles and keeping them in safe condition but perhaps I should think again, particularly in respect of tyre checking.

Perhaps 3 years and 50,000+ miles is too much for a car to do before it has it’s first MOT, main dealer serviced or not?

Perhaps I need to revert to my old pencil tyre pressure gauge?

 

From what you have been saying it seems to me that you think this is more a pressure / alignment issue than a tyre manufacturing defect.  Is that correct?

Draper Tyre Gauges have been what i have used for years, i always have one in cars i use and they have been accurate when checked against professional and calibrated tyre inflators / compressors.

 

Nice and easy to read when you have a bad back.

 

I will over inflate tyres getting the bead on then put the wheels on the vehicle and let the pressure down with one of these.

Edited 13 June, 20205 yr by Roottootemblowinootsoot

3 hours ago, Mickhill said:

From what you have been saying it seems to me that you think this is more a pressure / alignment issue than a tyre manufacturing defect.  Is that correct?

 

Yes.

 

See this type of tyre wear every day.

 

Thanks AG Falco

Get the camber checked, most likely too much negative camber.

@Mickhill

 

im late to this discussion, but that tyre in tge op looks theres a actual step cut into the shoulder rather than a flat wear surface from road contact, which would be caused by that point rubbing on something in the wheel arch. have you checked the arch and the new tyre for catching on anything? or that may move into contact with the tyre when driving, like the front of the  wheel arch liner?

 

Edited 17 July, 20205 yr by mac11irl

The first thing the guy at ATS checked was for something rubbing the inside of the tyre but there is nothing.  I have had new tyres fitted and no similar problem has presented itself.  The more I think about this the more I’m convinced this is a manufacturing defect with the budget tyre.

By the way, you are the first to recognise the “step cut” in the shoulder of the tyre.  That’s what shocked me most and why I titled the post “never seen tyre wear like this before”.  

@Mickhill 

you could see the tyres better than you show in your pictures. 

A picture of the sidewall from the side would have helped.

The tyre had done 35,000 miles you say. So did rather well for a lot of miles before maybe being run at to low a pressure or having had a hit.

 

It is a month since you posted so lets see who that tyre on that side is after a bit more use.

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Has the tracking / camber / alignment been checked yet with the new tyres on, and adjusted if required?

Edited 18 July, 20205 yr by Roottoot

On 17/07/2020 at 23:10, Mickhill said:

By the way, you are the first to recognise the “step cut” in the shoulder of the tyre.  That’s what shocked me most and why I titled the post “never seen tyre wear like this before”.  

Not "exactly" like that, but I've seem heavy inside edge wear caused by worn lower ball joints.