Hi all, problem with a 2018 sportbrake here, 26k mi., no damage, potholes or curbed tires.
I know this has been discussed before, and I tried search but got a bunch of garbage. Had a flat today, and both rear tires are worn through the steel belts, only on the inner 1.5 inches of the tread. Over half the tread remains on the rest of the affected rear tires. Clearly an alignment issue, so, have any of you who have had this issue received a satisfactory explanation and/or repair? Car is still under warranty, so if there is a TSB or other service advice that would be helpful, too. Thanks.

 

Have you had a 4-wheel alignment check done yet ? Wear on the inner shoulders is a result of tow-out. However it is normally only seen on the front wheels. The other thing that could cause this is regular carryings of heavy loads or pulling heavy trailers thus compressing the rear suspension to a position it would not normally sit at under normal conditions. Maybe the camber setting is wrong, but only a 4-wheel check will show it up.
Also tyres can result in odd things happening. My Mercedes-Benz SLK, bought last October had a persistent tendency to go left. I took it to a shop near me who have a sophisticated alignment rig, (they do a lot of motorsport work). This showed slight alignment errors, but when they swapped the tyres over left to right, the leftward tendency became a very slight rightward tendency, so small it's unnoticeable in normal driving. Of course here in the UK we drive on the left, and the road camber can make any car drift left.

 

Thanks, none of the mentioned conditions apply, it is scheduled in w. the ******* in a couple weeks for alignment check. Point is, this same issue has been experienced by multiple other listers, discussed here maybe a year ago but I can't find the threads.. In all cases the alignment settings were found to be "within spec" by the dealer while prematurely destroyed tires told another story. I am hoping to find out if or how previous posters' difficulties were resolved, or if this has been identified as a known issue. I'd like to be armed with as much knowledge as possible before confronting the service people.

 

My $.02....... everyone who's reported this problem had alignment checked repeatedly so I would look elsewhere. Where? I don't know but I believe you need to think out of the box. All the pictures I've seen of the tire damage look like something is digging into the tire the wear was so bad. You could probably eyeball alignment that bad. Maybe differential malfunction?

 

I have a 2013 XF sportbrake with 55k miles on the clock. Never been in an accident and never driven hard. Over the weekend I had a front right flat tyre and it turned out the inner edge of both front tyres were badly worn to the canvas but I still had decent tread depth of over 3mm over the rest of the tread. Checking the other tyre and canvas was showing through on the inner edge of the left front tyre. Had both of them changed and this morning I took the car in to have the tracking/alignment checked. Whilst checking the tracking of all four wheels the mechanic called me over and showed me the wear on both the rear tyres. Both had over 3mm of tread right across the tyre but the inner edges of both tyres were down to the canvas. Nothing is rubbing on the tyres and he checked to make sure all the bushes were good and no wear or movement in the rear suspension. The front wheels had a slight toe-out which is adjustable but the rear tyres were also slightly out. This is adjustable but according to the mechanic not a cause of the wear pattern on the tyres. What was concerning is that the camber on the rear tyres is very top in bottom out which would account for the wear but there is no adjustment for the camber setting on the rear tyres. The set up of the rear suspension is the same as the Range Rover and the parts look identical but the difference is on the Land Rover the camber is adjustable but not so on the Jaguar.
Has anyone else come across this problem and figured out why the tyres wear in this manner then corrected it. Could this be more to do with the self leveling suspension on the rear than mere alignment?
I also warn anyone with an XF to check their tread wear. I regularly check my tread but without getting the car on a lift or crawling under the car seeing the inner edge of the rear tyres is very difficult.

Front right tyre wear.

Right rear tyre wear.

Left rear tyre wear.

 

I have just contacted my local Jaguar service station for a chat about the above. According to their senior serviceman it is not a common fault and he would have to see the car before commenting further about any diagnostic. I fully understand this and was going to book it in for him to look at the car when he told me it would cost £175 for the first hour. Which Cuckoo land do these people live in. I have just had to pay out over £500 for four new tyres. It might not be common but he has obviously come across the fault before and could point me in the right direction but would prefer to charge me £175 for looking at the car. I think I will sell it and let someone else have the problem.

 

Followup... I took the car in to the dealer, the initial alignment was "in spec", but they were willing to change it to a smidge closer to a toe in condition on the rear, but I doubt a few tenths degree will help much on tire wear. Being a dealer they would not go farther. $250. Never again. I have a couple good race shops nearby, so if I see early tire wear it's going to somebody who both knows something and is willing to do something about it. Cass, your top photo (w. your fingers) shows the wear so far onto the sidewall it is scary. If that was camber wear I think you should see the wheels visibly splayed. Underinflation? How many miles were actually on the tires? They don't look OE.

 

I know it looks scary. Having spoken to my Jaguar Indi he confirms that he has seen this before but has no cure for it as there is no adjustment for Camber on the rear. He suggested two things. First to get the back wheels parallel and to rotate the tyres after 5000 miles. He thinks it might be the rear tyres are slightly toe-in and possibly a weak side wall that with under inflated tyres allows the inner side wall to drag when cornering.
So today I went back to my alignment shop and having put two new tyres on the back they adjusted the rear of the car to run true. Although it was not showing a lot of toe-in 0.25 and 0.35 they are now 0.07 and 0.10.
The tyres in the photo were almost new when I bought the car in 2019 with 44k on the clock and now it has 55k so by my reckoning they have between 11 and 15k on them. I would have been changing them this year anyway but it is scary where the wear is on the tyre and the fact you cannot see it without either getting the car up on a ramp or crawling right under the car with a torch to look at them closely. With the car on the ramp and looking from behind the camber on the rear is noticeable but has no adjustment. The top tyre was the front that I had a puncture with and the camber on the front was 0.65 and 1.17 which were both within tolerance. Although there is no movement in any of the bushes on the rear suspension I might invest in some new rear lower control arms this summer as my Indi states the bushes only last about 80k miles in his experience.

 

Hi Folks...
Any updates on your issues?

 

Unfortunately I have not found a solution. I have spoken to a Jaguar independent garage who have said they have seen wear like this before on an XF but not to the extreme that I had and their solution was to check the tracking and change the tyres. They suggested it might be a combination of low tyre pressure, excessive rear camber that is not adjustable, tracking issues which is adjustable and heavy loads.
I don't and never have had a heavy load in the car. Tyre pressures might contribute to my issue and I have had the tracking on the rear checked and adjusted. It was out a couple of degrees on both sides. Fronts were also done and had to be adjusted.
I have made a note in the diary to have the tyres removed from the rims and rotated in six months which will be about 4000 miles and will gauge the wear at that time.
Sorry I cannot be more precise with the cause. I personally think the rear camber is too extreme which might improve handling but at the expense of a new set of tyres every 8 to 10k miles.

 

Appreciate the update despite the ambiguity of solution so far..

Ima check my inner shoulders tonight!

 

I would suggest everyone with an XF should. The wear is very difficult to see without getting right down under the car to look at the inner edge of the rear tyres. I am a retired British Traffic police officer and I used to ticket people for having tyres in the state mine were in every day. To check the wear on tyres we used to slide our hands on top of the tyre and put out fingers in the grooves to check for the wear markers. If I had done this to my car I would have let it go as you cannot feel any excessive wear in the tread as it is all down the back almost in the side wall.

 

I rotate all my tires at 5K miles. The XF is a few hundred shy of 20K miles and the right rear (drive wheel, most wear) inside is at .2". New it was at .3", I should get about 50K out of my tires before the wear bar. I still contend that the excessive wear is not something caused by alignment, tire pressure, or bad tires. All the pictures I've seen (maybe 6 different cars?) have the same wear pattern and everyone checked and rechecked alignment. If this were a generic problem everyone would be reporting it because that kind of wear is FAR from normal. If you have warranty remaining I would hound, yes hound, the dealership to find an answer. Even escalate it to region and beyond until you get satisfaction.

 

My XF Sportbrake is a 2013 car which I bought secondhand with 44k on the clock two years a go so out of any warranty I had on purchase. Had brand new tyres on when I bought it so no sign of tyre wear at this time. The car now has 58k on the clock so those tyres only lasted 12k miles and only a fraction of this was high speed motorway mileage. Most of our driving is on English country roads and town driving. As all the alignments that can be done have been done I will have to wait now until the tyres wear again to see if the pattern continues. Chances are I will have sold the car before this and moved on to something else so might not see the tyre wear problem again..

 

Here is my inner passenger rear tire shoulder..

Standard image exposure

Enhanced image exposure

Driver side rear looks the same...

Switching to Goodyear Exhilarate once these iMove2/AS run out..

No threadbare sidewalls here..
Interested in what you each find out!

 

I don't want to hijack this discussion, yet do have a question or two, as well as a couple of comments.....

First, as a former XF owner, I'd like to know which Land Rover model shares the platform with the XF. I'm curious. My familiarity with the XF goes way back, to when the DEW98 chassis was developed in co-operation with Ford, who owned Jaguar at the time. This became a shared platform between the Jag S-Type and the Lincoln LS. We had an LS, purchasing it in 2000, and keeping it for 9 years. In 2009, since the LS had been discontinued, we purchased a 2009 XF, and kept it for 11 years. We traded the XF for an F-Pace, last year That's my "back story".....

Now, with respect to wheel alignment, and a few other things. I find it rather distressing that camber is not adjustable on these cars. My assumption is that the rear subframes are assembled/welded in some sort of "jig", which supposedly holds the mounting points in an exact location, while the frame is welded. Still, there are "variations", even minute, that can add up when ALL of the various components (and THEIR "variations") are assembled. That is supposedly why you build in the ability to make adjustments. Secondly, over time, components wear, again, calling for adjustments.

I guess we were somewhat lucky with both our LS, as well as our XF. Although the rear camber was "close" on both, the amount it was "off the nominal" wasn't enough to cause excessive tire wear. What did bother me the most, however, is that on both cars, the camber was different, side to side, IIRC on the LS, it was close to a 0.5* different, left to right. However, by carefully fiddling with the toe setting, we were able to minimize it, getting it down to a 0.3* difference. On the XF, IIRC, it was about a 0.2* difference. That was the best we could do, on both cars.

There are a couple, if not more, companies that make parts to correct suspension problems, but nobody developed one for the Jag/Lincoln platform. I was one of the really early members of the Lincoln LS Owners Club, back in 2001, and this problem was something we discussed at length, but with no resolution. There was some mention that the SVT Mustang Cobras of the day, had a very similar IRS assembly, and the Mustangs had bits and pieces that allowed for camber adjustment, and it was rumored that these pieces SHOULD HAVE fit the Lincoln, therefore the S-Type, too, but in the end, nobody was ever able to make it work.

Now, my "political comment"......as one who is very maintenance oriented, as well as a decades long DIYer, I find it increasingly frustrating that "non adjustable", or "lubricated for life" components are getting more and more prevalent. Being an old timer, one who was weaned on GM vehicles, I'm used to doing maintenance tasks such as changing the oil/filter in my automatic transmission, or changing the gear oil in the differential, on a regular basis. For the most part, gear oil is still "doable", but without a dipstick tube to refill the transmission, doing the filter/fluid change, is basically now out of the realm for the vehicle owner......

 

I am not sure which Land Rover model's rear axle is comparable to the XF but there just happened to be a Range Rover on the ramp next to my XF Sport brake when we were discussing the non adjustable rear lower arms and it was this the mechanic pointed at. I did not go over and compare them so I am only taking his word for it but he did say the Range Rovers lower arms were adjustable. Whether they are the same size or the adjustment in them is large enough to be able to fit and adjust in to place on the XF I do not know.
I fully understand what you are saying about the "non adjustable", or "lubricated for life" components but we have moved into an era where we have service engineers who replace items when worn out rather than mechanics who fix things. Take a lower suspension arm that is made of metal and has three or four rubber bushes. It is cheaper to buy a whole lower suspension arm with the bushes fitted than it is for a garage to spend the time removing the old bushes and pressing in four new ones. I quickly add that this is on a new car like the XF whereas on my 1968 Mk S Type it would cost a fortune to change a whole suspension arm and cheaper to change the bushes due to the lack of replacement items.

 

No signs of this issue on my 2020 XF-S at 7,000 miles. My rear tires still have all the original little “nibs” on the inside periphery and no hint of irregular wear, or even any wear. I do note that the placarded rear tire pressure is specified as 48 psi, a record for any car I have owned. Perhaps Jaguar changed “something” for the 2020MY build? I will continue to crawl under the rear end from time to time.

 

Yes the PSi for the rear tyres varies from 34 to 48 depending on the load which is not very helpful if you drive around by yourself all week and then on a weekend you put one heavy load in for one journey to the mother in laws and back. You are forever going to be changing the pressures for each journey. I set mine for 40 as an average but maybe this is why my tyres have worn as they have! Who knows?

 

Yes, tire pressures will indeed how the tire wears. For the record, I ran 32 psi in ours. And if it makes any difference, I dumped the OE Continental tires after 3-4000 miles, as they didn't impress. I replaced them with Bridgestone Potenza Pole Position tires. Much better handling, but IIRC, they have since been dropped from the line, and replaced with an improved tire.