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In the right rear tire a screw managed to puncture the tire in the sidewall area. So I'm looking to replace just that one tire because all the other tires have a decent amount left to drive on.
My question is, is it true that on AWD all the tires have to be exactly the same tread depth? Every salesperson I talked to has said this to justify replacing all four tires.
The system is sensitive to tires rotating at different rates from one another. This typically happens when one or more tires are slipping.
A person could simulate this by installing a wheel with a radius different than the others. The question here is are your tires the same diameter (or close enough) such that your 4wd system does not think your tires are slipping.
I'm going to guess that it will be fine. But if you want a real answer you'd have to do a bit of measuring and then apply some math. I doubt anyone will know the magic ratios which are mechanically regulated in the rear diff that dictate when the 4wd engages.
If you swap in a new tire and you feel the awd kicking in when it shouldnt then yes you need to replace the rest. But I do think a good engineer would have allowed tolerance for differences in tire pressure, and during turning.
In short few will be qualified to truly answer this. Near univeral ignorance is a salesman's dream. You need an answer from the guy at Honda who designed this. Not a tire salesman.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I do not know much about the rear ends in this car, or much of anything really. I based all of my math on things I have read online.
The CR-V rear end looks for a 3% difference, fronts rotating faster than the rear, before engaging the rear differential. The OEM specs for a CR-V tire is 205/70 R15, which would give us a diameter of ~26.3". 26.3" x 0.97 = ~25.5". Meaning the front tires would have to have over 0.400" tread wear. General all purpose tires have 10/32 - 11/32 (0.3125" - 0.34375") of usable tread before needing to be replaced. This would mean you'd be riding on the steel cords in the tire before this ever became a factor.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I do not know much about the rear ends in this car, or much of anything really. I based all of my math on things I have read online.
The CR-V rear end looks for a 3% difference, fronts rotating faster than the rear, before engaging the rear differential. The OEM specs for a CR-V tire is 205/70 R15, which would give us a diameter of ~26.3". 26.3" x .97 = ~25.5". Meaning the front tires would have to have over .400" tread wear. General all purpose tires have 10/32 or 11/32 of usable tread before needing to be replaced. This would mean you'd be riding on the steel cords in the tire before this ever became a factor.
It wont make a difference .
First , the differential will soak up the minor size difference across the axle . And average it out; 3/32 will be split to 1.5/32 total diff across the axle.
Second, Honda Engineers thought of this scenario in designing the system already and the rear differential has two pumps in it that operate the all-wheel-drive system. The first pump is driven by the drive shaft and the second pump is driven by the differential .The two pumps different size by 2.5% and that is to make up for a difference in Tire circumference from the front and the rear, accounting for tire wear.
see the pic below for Honda's own system description.
I just lost a single tire. I'm going to buy just one. It will either ride nice or not, if not, I'll buy the 2nd tire. Be warned about salesman of all feather, some may even tell you they can't legally install 1 new tire or/if/whatever. This will give you chance to find a good honest tire shop. Long shot would be to find a used tire of the same spec and mileage.
I will start out with the new one on the rear axle..... at some point I'll have to rotate them up front, any issue there ?
No . Should be fine . I just recently bought a CRV with a set of snow tires on it that the previous owner obviously never rotated. I measured the circumference on the two tires and they're different by almost 1/4 of an inch. I've experimented with the tires front back and side to side just to see what effect it would have and the effect was 0 so you should be okay. As I said Honda Engineers anticipated this would happen as long as the tires are the same aspect ratio/size you shouldn't run into any problems with some normal tire wear
01-28-2016, 11:02 AM
Tread depth on CR-V AWD
Makes sense to me
