Bad tire wear

[deceiver]

On a recent 12,000 mile trip with my little guy 6 wide sport I noticed excessive wear on the inside treads of both wheels. So much so that I might have to replace the tires soon even though the outside half is in good shape. The axle is this type of torsion axle. Is there any way to do an alignment on this type of setup or any other solution? Thnx.

[Shadow Catcher]

I would be having a chat with Little Guy, they seem fairly responsive to problems.
Is it a Dexter axle? this is not clear from the LG literature.
Dexter's have a bend in the middle and with the proper application of force that could be increased if necessary.

[Woodbutcher]

Sounds like a camber problem. Has the trailer been overloaded? Seems like the axle is bent tilting the tires out.

[Cliffmeister2000]

I bent my axle (not a torsion, though) and it ruined the tires just getting home, about 200 miles. I would look for a bent axle.

Edit: A trailer does not have to be overloaded to bend an axle. My axle was rated at 2000 lbs, and my trailer weighs 1,340 lbs, +- 100.

However, I hit a serious bump in the road and the trailer went airborne. I'm sure the landing weight was much more than 2,000 lbs.

My new axle is a 3,500 lb axle.

[bobhenry]

Camber would not cause wear that fast unless it was ridiculous, and you would know what the problem was because the wheels would be tilted in so far at the top it would look funny. I've run 3+ degrees of camber on some cars I have, which is very noticable, and it gives very little camber wear in the inside of the tires.

Toe, however, can easily scrub away tires in no time. If they are worn on the inside of both tires, they have a toe out condition, when looked at from above, they would look like this " / \ " with forward being the bottom of the screen. The tires are trying to turn away from each other while being dragged forward.

I would imagine that you experience some instability in the trailer with a setup like this, does the trailer wag?

I would imagine the only way to fix this on a beam axle trailer would be to bend the axle back into shape. Right now it is probably bent with an arc going toward the front of the trailer. Measure the distance of the axle from a know fixed point that is not part of the trailer, to the left, right, and middle of the axle to see if it is true. If it is bent as I suspect, Try chaining the center of the axle to a big tree and pulling a little with the tow vehicle...but be careful, don't want to pull too far.

Also try measuring for toe angle...

What I do is use a plumb bob and a tape measure. Plumb down one of the trailer tire grooves in the front and mark the ground where it touches. Then do the same thing on the other wheel in the corresponding groove. Measure between the 2 marks to the 1/16". Repeat the process on the back side of the tires. Make sure you use the same grooves in the tires as you are going to compare the measurements. If the measurement on the front is larger than the measurement on the rear, you have toe out.

or ya could just flip the tires inside out and get another 12,000

[caseydog]

On a heavy vehicle or trailer, camber can wear tires pretty fast, but 1,350 pounds on trailer tires (fairly hard compound) should not wear tires if the camber is of by a degree or so.

With a torsion axle, I'd also wonder about toe. Or, it could be a combination of both. If the toe is out of alignment, that can really eat up a tire in a hurry. I know from first hand experience.

I've read that it's not all that rare for torsion axles to by out of spec from day one. I've also read they can't be aligned, even by bending the axle.

You could just flip the tires on the rims, and switch sides on the trailer so that the inside treads become the outside treads, while still rotating the same direction.

But, I would talk to LG first, and see if there is some kind of issue with the axles they use that the axle manufacturer will cover to replace the axle.

Good luck.

CD