Does lowering the suspension affect your ruin your tire faster?

[acpTLA]

hi, if this post already answer by other post, sorry to ask again. I notice there is automatic lowering in the setting ( you can set always , other speed or never - the always setting is which recommend by Tesla). It will lower my car when I drive from any height to LOW setting. Does this affect your wire on wearing? I saw a youtube video recently and the guy claim this affect his winter tire and he has to replace after 3 month of driving. I do not know it is because his winter tire or his setting. Now he put never on the automatic lowering.

Does anyone know if this setting affect your tire?

thanks,

 

[yrekabaker]

I no longer do the auto-lowering, because on the "low" setting, the rear wheels tilt out, and this causes wear on the insides of the rear tires. I had to replace my rear tires at 10K miles because of this. But, not lowering the car can reduce your efficiency and and thus, your range. So, you have to make a decision about rear tire wear vs range. I continue to not "auto-lower", running at "standard" height all the time, and my "mileage" has gone from about 330 wH/mile to 360 wH/mile, doing mostly freeway driving.

 

[chillaban]

I no longer do the auto-lowering, because on the "low" setting, the rear wheels tilt out, and this causes wear on the insides of the rear tires. I had to replace my rear tires at 10K miles because of this. But, not lowering the car can reduce your efficiency and and thus, your range. So, you have to make a decision about rear tire wear vs range. I continue to not "auto-lower", running at "standard" height all the time, and my "mileage" has gone from about 330 wH/mile to 360 wH/mile, doing mostly freeway driving.

I've heard this a lot, but I've had my car auto-lowering at 55mph for 22,000 miles (with 18" tires) and there's been no uneven wear.

So, maybe it affects certain tire sizes or build dates, but I'm not sure it's a guarantee of uneven tire wear across the board.

 

[FlyF4]

Right, it wears the tires unevenly due to change in camber toe-in. I set mine to like 90 MPH so it will essentially never lower. I don
t care about any potential range savings.... minor benefit anyway.

 

[jgrgnt]

I'm not seeing any abnormal wear, and I have almost 15,000 miles on my 22" tire/wheel set. My suspension is set to "Always" Low, and occasionally I set it to Very Low. Plenty of tread life remaining.

 

[WarpedOne]

We can conclude the problem is not in the lowering (i.e. ride height) but in the suspension set up (toe-in particular). Make sure there is minimal toe-in (1 degree?) and ride height will not matter.

 

[DriverOne]

FWIW, I set mine to Always Lower - to avoid acceleration shudder.

After reading that this can cause uneven wear, I now frequently manually switch to Standard height to even out the wear. e.g. once on the highway, out of the Shudder Zone. If on a trip where range was a concern, I'd leave it on Low.

Over all I'm maybe at a 50/50 split between Low and Standard.

There's a video out there showing the camber changing as the suspension is lowered - Tesla Model X at 'Very Low' trades tire life for performance (and range?) But that is only claiming wear for "Very Low". And plenty of comments saying they are mis-understanding, and in fact the issue isn't camber but mis-alignment/toe-in. My non-technical eyes certainly understand the camber explanation, can anyone say why it's not camber? And the video is talking about Very Low, not Low, so... is driving around Low even an issue?

 

[GOPJEW]

hi, if this post already answer by other post, sorry to ask again. I notice there is automatic lowering in the setting ( you can set always , other speed or never - the always setting is which recommend by Tesla). It will lower my car when I drive from any height to LOW setting. Does this affect your wire on wearing? I saw a youtube video recently and the guy claim this affect his winter tire and he has to replace after 3 month of driving. I do not know it is because his winter tire or his setting. Now he put never on the automatic lowering.

Does anyone know if this setting affect your tire?

thanks,

Did your X get delivered with "Low" set as standard? Meaning it is already set to "low"?

Tesla started doing this last year to help address the shudder issue - I have been assured on both of my new X deliveries that the vehicles tires have been aligned to the new "Low" specs to avoid tire wear issues.

If this is the case - don't worry - any other settings will be temporary at best and should have little affect on your tires.

 

[acpTLA]

Did your X get delivered with "Low" set as standard? Meaning it is already set to "low"?

Tesla started doing this last year to help address the shudder issue - I have been assured on both of my new X deliveries that the vehicles tires have been aligned to the new "Low" specs to avoid tire wear issues.

If this is the case - don't worry - any other settings will be temporary at best and should have little affect on your tires.

I do not remember what was my setting when i took the delivery but she did told me it is recommended by Tesla to set 'always' for Low. But I feel the ride is better to standard when I do local drive. So, I set only high way speed.

 

[GOPJEW]

I do not remember what was my setting when i took the delivery but she did told me it is recommended by Tesla to set 'always' for Low. But I feel the ride is better to standard when I do local drive. So, I set only high way speed.

Any time you raise/lower you are changing the angles from whatever alignment your vehicle is set to.

Whichever way you are driving the most miles, that's how I would have my alignment set to.

 

[commasign]

My service center foreman says the inner wear issue affects the 22” wheels less. I have mine set to lower at 60mph so I get the efficiency benefit at highway speeds but reduce tire wear in city driving which is what we use the X for mostly.

 

[Yinn]

I just ran out and measured my 20’s. These were driven for roughly 12,000 miles with auto lowering set at 55mph (80% highway driving) and another 4,000 miles set to always low. I measured them 4x per tire, once in each groove and every single tire was even across the board.

Front Right: 6/32 - 6/32 - 6/32
Front Left: 7/32 - 7/32 - 7/32 - 7/32
Rear Right: 7/32 - 7/32 - 7/32 - 7/32
Rear Left: 7/32 - 7/32 - 7/32 - 7/32

Note, front right had a flat and was plugged several thousand miles ago. It’s been inflated to the same PSI, so a bit surprised it still reads lower.

 

[animorph]

I've got 12.5k miles, probably 80% on Low above 60 MPH where I had it set. At the annual service a few weeks ago Tesla measured all 6/32's, so the wear has been even. I leave it always Low now to avoid acceleration shudder. Strangely enough my SC checked alignment in Standard mode, so I guess they didn't get the shudder memo.

 

[DriverOne]

I'll just leave it in Low now then, the SC likely aligned it. I had no idea the wear was due to alignment and not to camber.

 

[Jimrod]

The SC here in Vancouver, BC suggested our Model X be set to low for "general driving around". I've kept it that way. It might be my imagination, but i feel the car handles a bit better at the lower setting, so i'll risk a bit of uneven tire wear for that alone. Plus the wheel well gap is a bit large at standard for my taste, but that's just for looks.

 

[Peteski]

Tesla started doing this last year to help address the shudder issue - I have been assured on both of my new X deliveries that the vehicles tires have been aligned to the new "Low" specs to avoid tire wear issues.

This is what I had presumed too. My Feb 2018 X was factory set to always low (not very low) and my tyre wear has been even across the tread so far. Basically negative camber increases as you lower the car and decreases as you raise it. But the important thing is that the camber is set optimally at the ride height you are actually using daily, whether that be low or standard. So if you are getting even wear across the tyres at low ride height, raising it will generally increase wear on the outside edges. But if you are getting even wear at standard ride height, then lowering it will increase wear on the inside edges.

It is that simple and the best thing you can do is monitor your tyre wear in 3 places across the tread at whatever ride height you prefer. If you start to notice uneven wear then you need to either adjust your ride height to compensate or take it to the SC to have the camber reset at your preferred ride height.