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Old 05-19-2008, 10:22 PM   #1
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I have a 79 boler 17'. that I have been happily towing for the past 2 years. I have put alot of renovations into it. This spring I took the wheels off for their annual bearing repack, and to my horror, I discovered I, I had ALOT of inside tread wear on the tires - to the point where I may have to consider replacing the them. What are the causes? What gives? The trailer is rated at 3000lbs. I weighed the unit and the axle weight fully loaded is 2866 lbs. The tires are ST rated, with a maximum inflation of 60PSI. I must admit that I was running 45psi in the tires last year. The axle doe not appear to have any bends in it when loaded, but I will have the get under with a tape measure and do some measurements just to be sure.

Can anyone shed some light, or provide some profound insight?

For now I am going to get the tires remounted so that the inside treads are on the outside and then run the tires at about 55 lbs, and watch very carefully.

Regards
Kevin.
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Old 05-20-2008, 08:19 AM   #2
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Kevin.....Just a hunch but when you re-did the wheel bearings did you grab the wheel at 12 o clock and 6 o clock and shimmy the wheel in that direction?____ the nut that holds it all together may have been too loose and caused the wheel to angle in a little bit.....that nut should be loose just to give about an 1/8" play top to bottom but that is about it.hopefully with the bearing update the problem will go away.....
Joe
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Old 05-20-2008, 04:55 PM   #3
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Toe out will cause the problem and Joe Z may be right to what caused it to toe out.

Underinflated will cause the center of the tire tred to cup out and will cause wear on both the inside and outside edges of the tred and over inflated tire will wear out the center of the tire tread. Rotation is certainly a good idea.

If it were me, I would do a depth reading of the tire tread after rotation, adjust the preasure in 5 lb incruments and take readings every 1000 miles or so to determine the ideal air preasure.
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Old 05-20-2008, 06:35 PM   #4
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Download this for pictures and likely causes of odd tire wear:

http://dexteraxle.com/i/u/1080235/f/6-8K_S..._Tires_2-08.pdf
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Old 05-20-2008, 09:17 PM   #5
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Kevin.....Just a hunch but when you re-did the wheel bearings did you grab the wheel at 12 o clock and 6 o clock and shimmy the wheel in that direction?____ the nut that holds it all together may have been too loose and caused the wheel to angle in a little bit.....that nut should be loose just to give about an 1/8" play top to bottom but that is about it.hopefully with the bearing update the problem will go away.....
Joe

Joe, you may have a point on this. My standard method is to tighten the bolt and shimmy at the 9 and 3 position horizontally. I tighten the bolt until there is no play what so ever, and then back off one spline. I have been noticing that the one spline backup (with the wheel removed is a bit more play than I would like, but I have left it as there in the past because tightening it up by one spline makes it tighter than I'd like. I am definitely going to revisit the play issue a bit more carefully.

Thanks.
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Old 05-20-2008, 09:20 PM   #6
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Toe out will cause the problem and Joe Z may be right to what caused it to toe out.

Underinflated will cause the center of the tire tred to cup out and will cause wear on both the inside and outside edges of the tred and over inflated tire will wear out the center of the tire tread. Rotation is certainly a good idea.

If it were me, I would do a depth reading of the tire tread after rotation, adjust the preasure in 5 lb incruments and take readings every 1000 miles or so to determine the ideal air preasure.
Also good words Darwin. I will look into this.

I wonder if anyone has ever had experience with re-aligning the axle? or Checking for alignment?

I took a closer look at the tire by the way: The inside wear is not even on the edge, but actually scalloped, indicating perhaps out of balance, or as Joe, suggests excess wobble.
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Old 05-20-2008, 10:39 PM   #7
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Quote:
Joe, you may have a point on this. My standard method is to tighten the bolt and shimmy at the 9 and 3 position horizontally. I tighten the bolt until there is no play what so ever, and then back off one spline. I have been noticing that the one spline backup (with the wheel removed is a bit more play than I would like, but I have left it as there in the past because tightening it up by one spline makes it tighter than I'd like. I am definitely going to revisit the play issue a bit more carefully.

Thanks.
Dexter calls for about fifty foot pounds of tightening torque while turning the wheel before backing off and finger-tightening, then back off one notch.
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Old 05-21-2008, 06:16 AM   #8
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I took a closer look at the tire by the way: The inside wear is not even on the edge, but actually scalloped, indicating perhaps out of balance, or as Joe, suggests excess wobble.
A Scallopped tire (hilly tread wear) on the side indicates under inflation...... be careful on the hold down nut for the bearings.... if i had a choice of too loose or too tight i would go with the too loose as you stated.I just jacked my trailer up after having the bearing repacked by a shop and it was way too loose (about 3/8" shimmy)
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Old 05-23-2008, 10:22 PM   #9
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A Scallopped tire (hilly tread wear) on the side indicates under inflation...... be careful on the hold down nut for the bearings.... if i had a choice of too loose or too tight i would go with the too loose as you stated.I just jacked my trailer up after having the bearing repacked by a shop and it was way too loose (about 3/8" shimmy)
Joe

Well, I went nutso with the scientific measurements tonight:

When the trailer is partially loaded (no fresh or waste water), I have 1 degree of camber (tilt inward) on the left wheel, and 1.4 degrees of camber (tilt inward) on the right tire. As for toe out, I measured 0.69 degrees of toe out. What this means is that I measured 77 1/16 inches across the front side of the tires, and 76 3/4 inches across the back side of the tires. So the tires toe outward just a shade. In addition, I took a straight edge to the axle to see how true it is. There is a tiny bit of a bow from front to back, which would indicate a toe out condition. There is a tiney bit of a bow down in the axle indicating there is a tiny bit of tilt inward on the tires, but shucks with a trailer rated at 3000 pounds, I don't expect the axle to be completely straight. When all weight is taken off the wheels, the axle is perfectly straight.

As for the toe out, has anybody ever taken a sledge hammer to an axle before? Is 5/16 of an inch too much difference in the tires?
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Old 05-24-2008, 11:36 AM   #10
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Kevin.....
Your just a tad over 1/4" of toe and i wouldn't worry about it and i definately wouldn't take a sledhammer to it either(if you jacked the trailer up and moved the tires to another position you would probably get a different reading)...... the axle is supposed to have a slight "bow up" in the middle....not down and may be why your having tread wear on the inside ( I just went outside to look at mine which is a fairly new axle and it bows up)try to look at some other trailers say boat ,utility or camper and they should bow up in the middle.....If you have a dexter axle try to call them and tell them how it bows down in the middle and see what they say but if it's an older axle it may be tired..... but i still believe the scalloped tires are from underinflation and may be mixed in with that downward bow in your axle.....Me and this is only my opinion I would probably just leave it alone reverse the tires and air up the tires and see what happens.....keep us informed on this as i would really like to know the outcome.
Joe
Slight upward bend in the center

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Old 05-24-2008, 08:21 PM   #11
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Kevin.....
Your just a tad over 1/4" of toe and i wouldn't worry about it and i definately wouldn't take a sledhammer to it either(if you jacked the t......

Thanks for the advice Joe. Moderation is likely the best approach right now. Making the axle bow upward is likely not too hard....simply put a hydraulic jack in the center and raise. But that will be later. I took the tires to a tireshop. The old fella there swapped the tires around for me. I thought that perhaps the bow down may be causing it. I talked to a mechanic who owns and runs a 10 bay shop. He suspects that toe out may be causing it. He gave me a name of a fellow who does some trailer alignments so I will ask and search around.

I will keep you posted.

Kevin.
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