Speaking of alignment..
 

My car has needed an alignment for a long time. It pulls to the right. The right front tire is wearing much faster than the rest. A coworker said it was because it is the drive wheel. Does this make sense? (of course they are way over inflated) I want to swap my two front wheels but I guess the only way that's happening is if I actually remove the tires from the rims and reverse them since you can't swap tires on the rims from side to side of the car (from what I've heard). Any suggestions on what I might do about the worn tire aside from replacing it? My dad says it's hard to tire iron a tire off--but it'd be worth the effort to get the other front tire worn down to be even with the other. Anyone have personal experience with tire removal and putting a tire on a rim? Also not sure what doing an alignment will do if one front tire is worn and the other isn't.
Aside from reduced tire wear, will a straight alignment really make a noticeable diff in FE? I'd classify the pull as moderate. If you weigh the car down (especially if the weight is on the right side) then the pull becomes bad/very bad.)


A simpler issue I'm curious about is my clutch. It makes a scrinch noise when I depress it. I don't remember hearing it before--but maybe it's normal. Any other VX clutches go scrinch when you depress it fully?

Considering your mileage the alignment can't be too bad. but I would get it done. Mine still needs an alignment. I have seen damaged tires cause a pull when the alignment was good.

The noise in the clutch, could be the pivot ball for the release fork. If it makes a noise when the engine is off see if you can hear it where the release fork comes out of the side of the transmission housing to connect to the slave cylinder.

Its possible to lubricate it but you have to be VERY careful to not get any lube on the clutch or you could ruin it.

regards
gary

I've done a few tubed tires with tire irons. Its tough to break the bead loose from the rim and then I usually tear the thin rubber strip that seals around the rim. This is not an issue when using tubes, but a tubeless tire will leak. Then you'd have to also get it balanced.

I had a used tire mounted and balanced for $11 2 weeks ago.

I have been hearing that it's now OK to move a tire from the left to right side of a car and vice versa.

IMHO I'd get it aligned- I find pull really annoying and it will help FE if only 0.01 mpg- every little bit helps!

Is the tire wearing evenly, or on one edge, or on both edges, or in the center, or cupping, or chipping, or anything else weird?

It's fine to move a tire from one side to the other.

The issue is something about the tire wearing in for the side it's on, and not riding smoothly when you put it on the other side. It doesn't matter if you switch it from one rim to the other, the reason to dismount it is to flip it and remount it. Nobody does this, everybody just leaves it on the rim and does the regular tire rotation. If move it and find it's not riding smoothly, you can try having it dismounted, flipped, and remounted with what was the inside now on the outside.

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete....jsp?techid=43
https://www.tirerack.com/images/tires...tation_abc.jpg

Do style A for FWD vehicles. In your case, if you just want to swap the front tires, just do that instead.

Do get the car aligned. If it's pulling that bad, handling may not be safe, and tire wear definitely suffers, and I suspect that fuel economy suffers.

Thanks guys! I believe the tire has worn a little more on the outside edge than the rest of the tire but the whole tire looks pretty well worn. I will just swap the fronts and see how she blows. Thanks again.

Switching left and right sides is only an issue with tires that use a directional tread. If you switched a directional tire from one side to the other, it would end up spinning in the wrong direction, which would likely cause excess road noise and reduce hydroplaning resistance. Directional tires generally have a rotation marking of some sort on the sidewall.

I think the Firestone 500's of many years ago brought on the "dont reverse rotation" precaution. I still prefer to not reverse rotation. I just rotated mine front to rear on the same side, because I can't get any replacement to match the originals. I'll try to wear them all out at the same time then replace them as long as they hold up. They are already 15 years old.

regards
gary

Years ago (early 70's I think) when they first started making steel belted radials they said not to rotate them side to side, but I haven't heard that for years. At that time anytime you saw a diagram for rotating steel belted radials it would show going front to rear without changing sides. I have noticed that the right front tires on my cars usually wear a little faster and I also believe it's partially because it is the drive wheel. If you are getting more wear on the inside or outside of the tire you are probably a little out of line. The tire is probably also out of balance if the wear isn't even. It would probably be a good idea to get the fronts on the rear anyway if you want them all to wear out at the same time, because on front wheel drive cars the front tires will wear out about twice as fast as the rear.

I've usually figured that one front tire wore faster than the other due to more of my turns being one way or the other. For example, I used to fly around a right-curved exit ramp daily, and my left front tire wore more than any other tire.

heres another thing to think about: if you just switch drive wheels (front ones in your case) wear those out then you only have to buy 2 new tires instead of 4 if you were to rotate all of em.

fwd cars tend to wear out tires alot faster for a few reasons ! the front tires are not only turning the car its propelling it 2 hard acceleration laucnhes th weight of the car to the trunk lifting up the front end which in turn puts less force to keep the tires on the road so you may be doing a slow burnout if you take hard right turns and accelerate hard. (kinda liek taking the front whel of a bycycle and just turnign the handle bars back and forth on the concrete, there will be a black mark (ie chunks of rubber) )

but to answer your questions:

yes get an alignment (sometimes they have deals if you get an alignment + tires)

yes u can swap the tires left to right, used to be back in the day with radial ply that the story goes that the tire breaks in to going a certain direction and if you reverse it it can make the ply layers come apart

all you do is take the rim off and put the rim/tire combo on the other side, use jackstands take em both off or take one off, put the spare on temporarily, jack up the other side.

alignments not only adjust if the wheels are goign straight they adjust the angle at which they contact the road (yours is off if one side wears weird) theres also another adjustment but not sure exactly what its purpose is...

u havent hit any curbs or potholes lately have you?

If you just switch the front wheels, you will never get the full wear from your tires. Besides the left front wearing in a different way than the right front, the fronts in general wear in a different way than the rears. By rotating so each tire spends 25% of its life in each corner (or 20% if you have a full size spare), you get the most out of your tires.

Besides, if you only replace the front tires and have the rear tires on for a long time, now you've got aged, UV-exposed possibly dry-rotted tires on the rear.

Oh, and the outside wear combined with pulling certainly sounds like a "toe in" misalignment.

it takes 10+ years for tires to get dryrotted (least thats around here)

alot less if thier not in the sun (if the cars parked make plywood cutouts to lean against the tires to keep the sun off them)

also use tireshine/protector, it soaks into the rubber preventing it from dryrotting

My spare has dryrotted out, it's surprising, it's the same age as other tires on there and it was holding full pressure fine, then all of a sudden, cracked all to hell and flat.... climate seems to eat rubber here... glass in Marvin has a small %age tint that's meant to cut UV too.

Rotating tires... From a fresh set installed on Marvin, (And every other FWD I've had has worn about like this too) they'll usually wear in this order, where 1st is most wear 4th is least.... Front Passenger, Front Driver, Rear Passenger, Rear Driver....

So how I swap them 1st time is FP gets RD, FD gets RP, RD gets FP and RP gets FD.... I guess that's an X pattern, but I write it like that to say FP always gets the best tire, FD 2nd best, RP 3rd best and RD 4th best... 5th best is in the trunk, but it will get switched in if any of the others get worse than it. So X pattern really only happens the first rotation, after that they get evaluated and switched accordingly, some corners might keep their tire through a rotation or two.

If I end up with different tires/tread patterns, they stay on the back, driven axle always gets matching pair, or when I'm really poor and have a heinz 57 mix, I match the two closest for the front. I don't "buy" the tire manufacturer/fitter advice of "if you only get 1 pair of snow tires, put them on the back" because half the time in icy winter driving, I'm TRYING to get the *** end to lose grip so I can haul it round to compensate for the front end understeering like hell (Yeah, I'm bad, I have my left foot on the brake and right foot on the gas in winter, steering it from both ends)

Reason for that is passenger side takes most of the weight on a crowned road, and gets most of the standing water, slush etc, so better tread on that side is good. Also IF either side is gonna "let go" first and slip, turning the car, I'd rather it be the driver's side, turning the car toward the shoulder rather than oncoming traffic, AND I feel more in control of a right hand skid than a left hand skid, due to better visibility of the road surface coming at you sideways from the drivers side allowing you much better perception for flicking it back out. You see the relative motion close to. In a left hand skid you're relying on "seat of the pants" feel and vision of relative movement wrt to objects much further away, and also can't see whether you're gonna catch a pothole or something within 15ft say, and flip the vehicle on it.

might check your ball joint(s) for wear as well. tho typically that would be inner tire wear.

Heh, yeah, whoops we missed that so far, you really should be looking closely at the suspension and steering for any problems, balljoints, tie rod ends, bushings, cracks in suspension members or front subframes, and loose strut or broken spring could also do it.

Check also whether it's pulling harder under acceleration or braking, that can tell you something. Like a loose tie rod end, may well be neutral under acceleration but go toe out that side and pull under braking. Listen for any clunks etc as you accelerate or brake or steer.

wow, thanks everyone! Well, I typically accelerate gently and brake moderately. I haven't noticed the pull change in these instances. The toe in mis alignment hypothesis seems reasonable to me. I plan to get an alignment next week. Thanks again! I think I'll swap right front to rear left and front left to rear right (x pattern as RW suggested) to balance things out and give the crappy Wal Mart $35 tires that are currently on the front a break.

Oh, there is one turn I take at speed fairly often that is a left hand turn--so that could also explain it (have to maintain some momentum for the hill, otherwise I'm starting out in 2nd and that's no fun)