I submitted the question shown below to Land Rover customer service using their online form. They replied that I need to contact my dealer for a technical question like this. Of course, if I had confidence in the answer from my dealer I wouldn't have submitted this question directly to LR. And this is really a question for the manufacturer, not a dealer.

The reason behind this question is that I had damage to one tire from a nail, a common problem everyone has sometime in their driving career. The tire had to be replaced because the puncture was on the shoulder of the tire and could not be plugged. However, the tire shop insisted on selling me two new tires for the axle because the LR2 is AWD and they said the tread depths need to be the same, or very close, to avoid problems with the differential (that they didn't want liability for).

Obviously, this nail puncture turned out to be a very expensive fix with two new tires. What I'm wondering about is how close the tread depth really needs to be? I thought I'd post my question in this forum in case anyone has any insights based on prior research.

Question:

I understand the tread depth on the tires needs to be close enough to avoid problems with the differential. Can you please tell me the tolerance for differences in the tire tread depth? I read on a car forum that the difference in tread depth should be 4/32" or less for tires on the same axle, and the difference in tread depth doesn't matter between the front and rear tires (different axles). I also understand this mismatch concern was a bigger issue for the original Freelander 1 (pre-2007), but less of an issue for the newer Freelander 2 (aka, LR2).