Fusion awd system, tire replacement

96dreamer

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My wife has a 2016 ford fusion that had a tire continually going flat at around 26k miles. I was putting air in it every few days. Finally got tired of it and took it to a ford dealership for that and an alignment. They called and said the tire couldn't be repaired, I asked the guy over the phone about replacing one tire on an awd system and causing issues and he claimed it wouldn't be an issue. I actually asked twice on the phone because I thought it was odd he said it would be fine. Currently the car has about 31000 miles with no issues but the front passenger tire is about .158 tread depth and the passenger rear, new one, is at about .268. This seems like a large difference for an awd system. The driver rear is about .221, so closer but still over 1/32" difference.

Am I flirting with issues later after the 60k power train warranty is up?
 

96dreamer

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whole reason I started this thread, saw that earlier this evening. I didn't see anything on there about year, mileage or tread difference.
 

DHG1078

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I know the front two need to be close, and the rear 2 need to be close, not sure how much the front to back difference matters in an AWD system though.

I would at a minimum replace 2 tires.
 

rotor_powerd

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I believe Tire Rack will shave down a new tire to match the tread depth of the current tires. It sucks to pay more money to wear down a brand new tire, but still cheaper than replacing all 4. I was going to do the same thing for my wife's SQ5 the other day but the other 3 are pretty close to the wear bars so I just went ahead and bought all 4. Turns out that tires for 21" wheels are extremely not cheap. :bored:
 

DHG1078

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I believe Tire Rack will shave down a new tire to match the tread depth of the current tires. It sucks to pay more money to wear down a brand new tire, but still cheaper than replacing all 4. I was going to do the same thing for my wife's SQ5 the other day but the other 3 are pretty close to the wear bars so I just went ahead and bought all 4. Turns out that tires for 21" wheels are extremely not cheap. :bored:

You're just getting down to the good part of the tire faster.
 

mrlrd1

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On that AWD system that much differential will not be a problem. Some of the older viscous coupling AWD units (Explorer, Expedition) would burn up couplers with as little as 2/32" variation. The newer style PTUs are garbage in general, but it usually takes a 4/32" variation or larger to create a problem. But that does not tell the entire story. CIRCUMFERENCE is what matters as that can vary tremendously with new tires even with the same size and brand.
 
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DHG1078

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On that AWD system that much differential will not be a problem. Some of the older viscous coupling AWD units (Explorer, Expedition) would burn up couplers with as little as 2/32" variation. The newer style PTUs are garbage in general, but it usually takes a 4/32" variation or larger to create a problem. But that does not tell the entire story. CIRCUMFERENCE is what matters as that can vary tremendously with new tires even with the same size and brand.

Well tread depth changes the circumference, which is why its a problem. You get a new tire that is "large" for its size coupled with an old tire and you are looking at a relatively large difference.
 

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