However it has nothing to do with the wear in question IMO. I use the "light load" setting normally for comfort. When traveling with the wife and dog (70lb.) and baggage and usually at high speed I use the "normal load" setting. Short trips around town loaded with passengers or baggage I just leave it on "light load". I'm getting excellent wear characteristics. I hope someone takes the time to find the cause and reports back for future reference.

 

I remember seeing, a number of months back, a discussion on whether road "speed bumps" were causing undue tyre wear. In particular, the sort where there are two (or three) separate ones across the road width with chamfered edges tempts you to straddle the bump with wheels each side so as to avoid bumping over them. This was found by a number of drivers to cause undue wear on the inside edges of their tyres - enough in some cases to expose the reinforcing material inside the rubber,. I wonder if this has any bearing on the current discussion? Odd though that it apparently only affects XFs.

 

Can't stretch my imagination far enough to believe this but I've been wrong before. By definition people wouldn't be driving over these at speed .... would they? .... and how would the wear take place evenly around the whole circumference of the tire? But I think this is the type of thinking that will eventually get us an answer.

 

We have several of these "Speed Bumps" as described around where I live and I aways straddle them so there might be something it that theory. Problem is the other option is to drive over them and wreck your suspension and alloy wheels. Might have to slow down in future.

 

After posting that I haven't had any abnormal tire wear issues in 20K miles this pops up. Tires are about 1/2 worn. The damage in the pictures happened between 15K and 20k miles and showed up on the right front tire during a 5K rotation. I took it to my tire dealer for advise




. Never once did he (the owner) say anything about alignment and in fact said the tire wear was very good across the tread. He said he's seen the same type of damage on high performance cars with independent suspension but doesn't know why. He said it was most common on Porsche. Look where the chunks are coming out. Consistent with the location on pictures of tires that I've seen that went down to the belts. He's a Goodyear dealer and said there wasn't any bulletins that would explain it. Even though the tire is out of warranty he suggested I ask Goodyear so I sent them an email requesting a way to send them the pics. They haven't answered yet.

 

Somewhere between 13,500mi and the current 19,000mi, 3 of my 4 tires have done this.
They mentioned possible alignment problems. Not sure how this could happen in 5,500mi. Had it for a year and it's very gently driven. Could it be a tire defect? If it is alignment problems is it going to continue 🤷🏼‍♀️ Sounds like I'm not alone on the issue.

 

Having had this problem I ran my new tyres for six months around 4000 and took the car to my tyre garage to have the tyres checked and rotated. No adverse wear on the inner edges yet. I asked for the tyres to be rotated on the rims only to be told the tyres are directional so it can't be done. Changing the left rear to the right rear still means it is the same inner edge on the road. Stupid tyre.

I think this is a fault with the rear alignment on the XF that Jaguar are fully aware of but don't want anything to do with. They might even have corrected the problem with the newer model as mine is a 2013 car and there was a new model I think after 2015. I would suggest anyone with a XF get the tracking laser checked and adjusted to as near perfect as possible. Change the rear suspension bushes every couple of years and keep an eye on those inner edges a sit seems to be OK one minute and then tearing chunks off the inner edge the next.

 

My $.02 ........... The drive wheel is the right rear on all cars (that I'm aware of). With IRS you get just that corner squatting down under acceleration and it changes the alignment dynamics. If the suspension were made more stiff to prevent the squatting it would make the ride too stiff for a sedan. Hence the tire on that corner gets beat up more than the others.

 

I thought the drive wheels were both the left and right rear, with the differential powering both wheels and allowing different rotational speeds for each wheel as the car goes around corners.

 

Unless you have a limited slip differential (LSD) only one wheel drives. Unless I'm wrong the X260 doesn't come with LSD or offer it as an option. But you are correct about the purpose of the differential in cornering.

 

Well, that does surprise me. I agree that a LSD allows power to be directed to the rear wheel that has traction. This solves the issue of when one rear wheel loses traction (on ice or in snow for example), a standard differential directs all the power to this wheel which just spins, rendering forward motion impossible. But surely, normally when both rear wheels have traction, the differential (either standard or LSD) directs power to both rear wheels? That's why each rear wheel has a drive shaft.

 

The way it was explained to me, by someone much more knowledgeable on the subject (that wouldn't take much I admit ) the power to both wheels is equal because it comes from the same ring gear but one takes the lead due to clearances in the differential gears, and there's several of them.. The explanation came from a tire dealer when I asked him why on all my cars the right rear always exhibited more wear than the other tires on all my cars. "It's because that's the main drive wheel" even though power is routed to both axles. Positraction was developed to in effect (but not actually) lock the axles together when going straight. Someone correct me if after all these years of believing there's a main drive wheel is wrong. Look at your right rear inner tread ..... you'll see it wears quicker than the other tires.