[DML] tire wear / front end vibration

[Jason Ferrara <jason@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ever since I've owed my car (been 12 years or so, 100K miles), I've  
never been able to get more than 25k miles out of a set of tires.  
When I first put new tires on everything is fine, but after about 10k  
miles or so the front tires wear funny so that I start to get a  
slight vibration in the front end. By 25k miles the vibration is bad  
enough that I need to replace the tires. The tires still look fine.  
Plenty of tread left. But they're just out of round enough to cause  
the vibration.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

Over the years I have the alignment done several times, and had the  
following parts replaced (because they clearly needed to be, not  
because I was just blindly swapping things to try to get rid of the  
vibration):

steering rack
lower ball joints
lower control arm bushings
rotors (and brake pads of course)
tie rod ends
steering column
upper and lower steering u-joints
shocks
springs (had the car lowered)


The only thing suspicious I can find on the car now is a loose  
steering column bushing. Could this be causing the funny tire wear,  
or is it more likely the vibration from the tires is what made the  
bushing loose?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I use the car as a daily  
driver (at least when the weather is nice), and going through tires  
this quickly is not good. I've got 20k miles on the current set and  
they need to be replaced.

Thanks.

- Jason





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