Rear wheel tyres wearing

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Newbuilder

Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2021
Messages
20
Location
Bonnie Scotland
Hi , new to forum so I will try and list everything at once!

Nissan Leaf 2020 e+ Connecta (I think - second top model, large battery).

Passenger side rear wheel (UK MODEL) outside edge is sitting at 2mm with inside edge at 4mm and middle at 3mm.

Nissan say there are no known issues but I have seen in other forums clear problems and "shims?" made by Nissan to rectify.

I have pushed the dealership who will now to a 4 wheel alignment at their cost to see if anything is going on with the fixed rear axle.

I don't want to be buying a new tyre for it to happen again. Tyres are 17" and Dunlops at moment. CAr has done 18k miles.

Thanks for any words of advice.
 
Welcome to the forum. That tire isn't running less pressure than the others, is it? That's the first thing I would check, although low pressure usually results in more wear at the edges, and less in the middle of the tread.
 
Hi thanks for the reply,

All pressures were checked at the dealer and they are all showing correctly and the console is showing them all correctly (give or take 1PSI).
 
Are you the first owner?

Was thinking maybe the tire was damaged, replaced with the same tire brand, but had more mileage, and then you bought the car.

If somebody bought my Leaf, they'd be wondering wtf, because one of my tires was bought used, and is worn more than the others.
 
I was informed by the dealer that rotation was no longer done by the dealership and this was removed from all services

Every other tyre is sitting at 4mm across all three areas.

Interestingly Dunlop technical team say it could be caused by the winding roads in Scotland! I have heard many excuses but….. The next will be that chasing the Loch Ness Monster and driving with a kilt causes instability 😂
 
Very odd your dealer won't rotate tires. I just rotated my tires at the dealer on Friday (part of a free deal when I bought the car at this dealer) and had my free battery check and such done.

Plenty of tire shops should do it. tire rotation is something you should do on any car EV or not.

Another thing that can cause weird tire wear is alignment issues.
 
Sorry should justify the dealer not done and add “as standard”.

Alignment being checked courtesy of the dealer now but leaf rear axle is fixed and cannot be adjusted. I have argued that this just means they would need to replace anything that causes alignment issues then.
 
I'm not sure if this might be the case but I know some shops won't rotate a more worn tire to the rear. To me, this is opposite of the way I think as on a FWD vehicle the fronts generally wear much faster than the rear. When I asked why I was told they didn't want the more worn tires to be on the rear as it could cause fish-tailing. Personally, I'd rather have a little fishtailing than the front to lose traction and head straight towards the ditch! For this reason, I generally rotate my own tires with my X-wrench and 2 floor jacks, besides it generally takes me less time than driving to the shop I purchased the tires at, waiting and having it done, the same thing for oil changes on my remaining ICE vehicles. Of course, at some point, I may no longer be able to do this but for now, I'm ok.
 
The dealer's shop has a machine to measure alignment, but seems to have no expertise in how to make adjustments.

i'm surprised that the rear toe is not zero--there is no need for any toe on the rear.

It's hard to believe that the right side tire doesn't also have some wear since it is at 0:22 (22 arc minutes) vs 0:25 on the left. That amounts to toe-in at the tire of 2.2mm L & 1.95mm R. That is a huge amount of toe in and will wear out a tire such as you have experienced. Toe = 12 * tangent(angle) in inch units.

Anything can be adjusted on a suspension; years ago i had access to a 4-post frame machine to pull a bent chassis back into square, and i have used a hydraulic press to bend control arms to take out excess camber and knee-back.

It's all just steel and can easily be bent to conform to your will. Just need to find an alignment shop with the right tools, and understands the spring-back of steel, and how to measure suspension geometry.

Good luck let us know how it goes.
 
I have been told there is no alignment adjusters at the rear and that it would need to be a full new axle but customer services has basically said that they believe the dealer as they are the experts. If I wanted another opinion I had to go to a new dealer start over and pay to have another alignment test.

Report https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UpWEcvmRtY9_lFRD_ASRmVrbuUpWZbe4/view?usp=drivesdk
 
so both rear tires are wearing on the outer edge from the toe-in.

Looking at it again, the negative 1.5 degrees camber on the rears is quite puzzling also--why would there need to be any rear camber, and such a large amount?

Maybe the camber is adjustable, and in some cases i have seen where the toe-in changed according to how the camber was set (e.g. older style porsche 911 with rear torsion bars).

i'd be willing to bet that the rear must be de-cambered up at the top of the strut towers, and that doing so will reduce the toe-in. No suspension bending required, just set camber to zero.
 
The negative camber would be about 0.3 inches or 8mm. i suppose you could visually see that much if looking at the car from rear.

There is not a clear answer from searching the web about which rear beam is used, most show this one:
ZE1U_US_431A_2.jpg


But i also found this diagram: which is correct?
3821425_1.png


Has your car ever been pulled out of a ditch or towed by a wrecker from the rear? Or have you ever backed up into a curb fairly hard? The reason i ask is that if the main beam tube has ever been pulled by a chain from the center towards the rear, then it could deflect such as to produce the camber and toe-in that you measured. Or backing into a curb could bend the little stub axle.

A body shop with a frame machine could easily correct the rear suspension angles either by tweaking the main tube or on the axle stubs. The Body Repair Manual in the FSM set gives all the body dimensions in detail.
 
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