Front Tires Cupping Mojave

[SonoranMojave]

Just over 43k miles in my 21 Mojave on stock Wildpeak ATs. Front tires have been cupping for a little while now but I forget at what mileage I first noticed it. Both tires look basically the same with the cupping in the center tread.

Truck sees A LOT of highway miles but during the Fall/Winter it’s usually rolling over dirt at least once a week. So I’m having shocks rebuilt this week since it’s basically at the service interval. I don’t see any leaks, but I’d say the ride has been bouncier as of late and overall more noise and vibration (the cupped tires don’t help with that). Tracking isn’t great either.

Anyway, while I’m at it I’m having an AEV spacer lift installed and 37s mounted. Since I’m dumping a few Gs into this I want to make sure I’m covering all my bases. What else should I be checking with the suspension that could be causing the issue?

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[KevinC]

Cupping is normally caused from lack of proper tire rotations. So my first question would be how often are you rotating your tires?

Second - What is your tow? If you are at 0 degree I would go back to 1/8" in.

 

[SonoranMojave]

Admittedly it’s been a little while since they were rotated. That’s because a couple of oil changes ago the service guy said the front tires were a bit lower in tread (than the rear) so he recommended that I not rotate. I took that to mean they were either lazy or busy and didn’t want to do it.

I could see how the lack of rotation has made the cupping worse, but could that be the root cause?

 

[Minty JL]

Its common on front solid axle trucks.

My tire guy told me to rotate them every 5,000 to keep the wear even. Its been working for me

 

[PuddleJumper]

you wanna rotate every 5k or less. Thats just a thing with SA vehicles. My buddy did 15k on his brand new set with no rotation and the front cupped to the point of causing a shimmy. He was told by his tire shop that they would have to be replaced. I just put em on the rear and did a 30 sec burnout. took em in for rebalance after that and he got another 20k out of em. I probably blew 10k off with my redneck fix tho ?

 

[Lunentucker]

+1 on every 5,000

 

[SonoranMojave]

Well I have been wanting to wear these tires out so I can stuff larger tires and do a lift, who knew it could be done so easily!

My concern is identifying any other underlying issues before putting too much mileage on brand new rubber. But I’ll definitely be getting the new ones rotated religiously!

 

[Duece McCracken]

My 23' JTR with 27k on it now, is starting to cup on the fronts. I have not rotated. Will do it tomorrow, lol.

Still OEM Wildpeaks. I'd be more cautious if they were aftermarket 37's! $$$$$

 

[SonoranMojave]

37” KO2s went on today, lift tomorrow. Wow the KO2s look so good with the stock ride, I’m conflicted now about the lift!

 

[SonoranMojave]

Lift is on now which gave me a little death wobble scare yesterday after driving home from the installer. I was actually on my way to an alignment shop first hoping that would fix the issue. Of course it didn’t and when I played around with the steering in my driveway I noticed the track bar was moving side to side where it connects to the axle.

The bolt was a little more than hand tight so I torqued that baby down and it seemed to fix the issue after a test drive and hitting some bumps aggressively. Just hope it didn’t cause any other damage as I probably had 5-6 DW episodes just over 2 short car rides.

My caster came in at 7 degrees on both sides, is that too high? I’ve got the Rancho brackets set on the top hole.

 

[Bucephalus]

What the consensus on Rotating Pattern? Like RWD or cross pattern?

 

[NC_Overland]

My previous SFA Jeep was a JKU Rubicon. When it still had the factory M/Ts, I had to rotate them every 3k miles vs your typical 5k. It was mainly because I didn’t slow down for corners like you should with M/Ts and those Rubicon specific M/Ts were not great tires.

 

[Bucephalus]

My previous SFA Jeep was a JKU Rubicon. When it still had the factory M/Ts, I had to rotate them every 3k miles vs your typical 5k. It was mainly because I didn’t slow down for corners like you should with M/Ts and those Rubicon specific M/Ts were not great tires.

Did you get cupping?

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