K03 wear issue - bad alignment, suspension issue, or tire?

[reds10]

I’m curious as to your thoughts on this wear issue on the stock k03 tires. I just came back from a long road trip and the tires became extremely loud, like deafeningly loud and now I know why.

I’ve rotated them regularly (this is the 4th time) and they are just now at 22,000 miles.

what you see is the worst of the two front tires which have now been moved to the rear. The larger inner lugs are wore down ~1/8”+ and don’t even touch the pavement anymore being on the rear as you can see from the lack of dirt on the tread. the skinner inner lugs look to be wearing completely normal though! Maybe because they have more support running towards the the center of the tire?

The truck was just in the shop last week for an oil changeand they inspected the alignment and didn’t note any issue, so I feel less strong about that possibility. Also, I’ve never seen this type of issue from alignment where the wear is only effecting one size of tread lug, but I suppose anything is possible.

I’m leaning toward taking it back to the shop and having them check all the suspension components.

I’ve been looking at new tires thinking I wanted to try something different, and now I feel like this one tire is pretty much shot but I’ve got to get the issue fixed before doing anything new.

For what it’s worth I drive fairly mild mannered and 75 to 80% of my miles is highway. And of that I’ve towed 3,500 lbs about 1,500 miles I’m guessing.

It’s really hard to get good pics of the issue so I hope it comes through well enough.

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[got3fords]

I can't tell squat from the first two pics. The third looks like more wear on the inner edge, maybe? Not sure what would cause that. Any aftermaket suspension mods? I'm only just over 6k and haven't noticed any unusual wear.

 

[donkey]

They almost all do this, comes with the tire lol

 

[superj]

They looked cupped. Like maybe the front tires were toed out a little or the camber is off

 

[pablo94sc]

The inner wear is likely from negative front camber and a little toe out; and the tire naturally deforming more in that area due to the lug shape, like you mentioned. What psi are you running, and are your roads kinda rough (old)?

What is the odd wear stripe down the middle of the tire?

Mine also howl, so that's just a thing these tires do.

 

[MJ12]

Tire pressures... did you chalk test or run at the over inflated factory fill?

 

[reds10]

39 psi in all the tires since purchased. Never any issues with tire pressure.

no idea what that wear pattern I. The center is. That is a little odd.

 

[entoptics]

Mine did the exact same thing, and of course happened right during, or very shortly before a 600 mile trip, at about 15K miles.

Upon return, I immediately took it to the dealer and the alignment was off in the front significantly, but not huge. Noise went mostly away after alignment/rotation, but the cupping was pretty substantial, and looked pretty much identical to yours

Noise came back a couple months later, this time on a 4000 mile trip. At the halfway point, I took it to a Ford dealer, thinking alignment was bad again. It was ever so slightly out, on one side only, but this time the alignment correction didn't stop the tire noise, and there doesn't seem to be any obvious cupping like the first time and in your pictures.

After the trip, I rotated again, and there wasn't much, if any, change in the tire noise. I'm a couple thousand into that rotation (22K miles total), and am not seeing the cupping, just the tire noise.

Not sure what to think, but without obvious wear, I'm thinking it's just the KO3 being a KO3?

 

[OxygenMask]

Mine started getting the KO Howl at around 8k. 10k now, no wear pattern that I can see.
I ran 40 psi during an 8600 mile road trip, otherwise I normally run 35. Makes no difference.

 

[OxygenMask]

That "stripe" down the center appears to be just the mold seam. On one of mine it's pronounced, on 2 it's much less, one 1 there's none at all.

 

[cyterio]

I got the howl at about 20,000. I’ll have to take a closer look at my tread to see if it’s consistent with yours. Crazy how they go from not bad to terribly loud and annoying almost overnight.

 

[Peter949]

Mine got loud after 25k but still rode and look good when I switched to Toyos. Toyos are better on road and off road hasn't been bad.

 

[Txquailguy]

Make sure you always have a "road force" balance done at your tire shop. That will give you the skinny on the tire itself. I got a bad OEM tire from ford on my new Ranger. I could feel a vibration at speed.....tire was graded at 39 on the machine.....that is a VERY bad tire!
Those KO2/KO3 tires are known for trouble balancing.....I ran KO2's on my 19' Ranger.

 

[cb4017]

I believe the first thing I would do is get an alignment from a quality shop that knows what they're doing. I've had good luck at Goodyear.

I had the local Ford dealer do an alignment on an F-150 I had. They completely screwed it up.

As far as tires I've had 3 sets of Falken Wildpeaks over the years. Currently running Falken Rubitrecks on my Ranger. Been happy with all of them.

 

[Adventure Ranger]

Your pictures show Offset Lug wear, meaning one lug is good, next one is worn. This is also evident in the inboard to outboard stagger of the wear pattern in your 3rd pic. If this was a Toe or Camber, the entire inner or outer edge would be worn off evenly. This condition is unfortunately a characteristic of heavy lug tires. Tire manufacturers recommend regular tire rotation using a 4-point rotation ( tire goes through all 4 positions ) done at regular intervals. We ran KO3's on a Wrangler, rotated every 10k km with the oil change. Without it we got the same wear. I started rotating tires every 10000KM on every truck or SUV the wife and I have driven. Never had an issue since - 20 years and going. You state 22000 Miles, should have been rotated 3 times by now. Have you done any rotations?

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