Replace Rear Tires or All Four?
 

Ruined a rear tire with a nail, too close to sidewall to fix...second time in 18 months :mad:

20K miles on them now (goodyear eagle sport), any idea if I can get away with replacing just the two rears or do I need to spring for all four?

I had a similar question. Never got an official answer. Here is my old post:

https://landroverforums.com/forum/lr...d-depth-82637/

The manual recommends replacing all four. The goodyear guy said my tread was at 7/32 or 8/32 (new would be 10/32), and that was right about their limit for replacing just one tire.

But given the know history with gearboxes, I just went with four new Toyo 235/60R18XL Open Country (all I could find on Sunday). About $700 installed in SOCAL. High wear rating, and were pretty quiet on the drive home. Vacation road trip tomorrow, we'll see how they do.

Toyo's are good tires. I am a little surprised you replace all four if your other axle had 7/32 tread remaining. That was an expensive nail. There's got to be a better solution when something like this happens.

Cheaper than a gearbox.

2/32 is the min, so you 8/32 to play with. I was already 3/32 into them so almost halfway through their life anyway.

I've always thought it would nice if dealers could lathe new tires down to match existing tires. They already have the balancer to spin it, they'd just need a cutter.

Ditto what he said ^^^ 2/32" is the "rule of thumb" for tire depth variance. If you are buying the same brand of tires, keep the rest as spares so when you get down to 6/32" and need another tire, you've got spares already the right tread depth.

I think merlin said that 2/32" is the minimum tread depth for a safe tire, not the variance between tires. 2/32" max variance between tires on the same axle is almost no variance.

Do you have a reference you can provide a link to that states the max variance is 2/32"? I've been trying to get an "official" ruling on this for some time. Is this true for every AWD vehicle, or specific to the LR2?

2/32 or 3/32 variance was what the goodyear guy said was their limit, so not official LR spec. The LR manual says to replace all four without giving a spec.

2/32 (out of the original 10/32) is where the tread wear indicator bars go solid.

Unloaded inflated tires are not flat. Turning a tire like that would remove more material from the center of the tread. You would not be happy with the result.

As for the op I would just replace the 2 and have them put them up front.
3/32 is only .090" the transmission won't notice that. Also have them replace the most worn of the remaining three tires.