Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

Please Help me figure out more for sure whats going on....

New Tires put on with alignment 12,000kms ago.

Mickey Thompson 27x9.5 on 15 inch rim

They soon after began wearing on both the outer edges of both front tires. The back are fine.
My first thought was that underinflation was the problem however I don't think that is it as i'm usually up at 38 psi unless i'm really off-road. Is this a case of a tire that cannot support the Deli's weight?

The load limit for the tire is written as 1180kg which by my figuring is about 75% of the deli's weight.

Any ideas?

bosc wrote:The load limit for the tire is written as 1180kg which by my figuring is about 75% of the deli's weight.

Is it per tire or for all four together?
We weighted our Delica including camping gear and two people recently on a truck scale. 2370kg in total!

how wide is your rim ?

a bad alignment would have worn either the inner or outer rubber.

Have you ran them under inflated ?

Over inflating them would cause the inside lugs to wear prematurely. Not the other way around.

Can you take a profile picture of one of the rear tires ?

Are these what you have ?

Mickey T Baja Belted HP's ?

you say you run at 38psi, but you don't say what recommended PSI for that tire is... you may be under-inflated.
beyond that, load rating is possible.

Green1 wrote:you say you run at 38psi, but you don't say what recommended PSI for that tire is... you may be under-inflated.
beyond that, load rating is possible.

Not sure the recommended- the tire says "max load limit 1180kg at 30psi cold"

fexlboi wrote:how wide is your rim ?

Not sure the specs on the rim, they were on off the boat- aluminum five star rims- seem to be seated correctly

jfarsang wrote:Have you ran them under inflated ?

Sure have, as I need to to get through the sand although not for that long in the sceme of things. I'll take it down to 15psi, 10 if i'm stuck.
I seem to get stuck alot these days...

I took the Deli on atrip to Vancouver which is 1600km away and thats when I began noticing it.

jfarsang wrote:Are these what you have ?


Mickey T Baja Belted HP's ?

That is the exact tire, I can take more pictures if you like.

fexlboi wrote:Is it per tire or for all four together?
We weighted our Delica including camping gear and two people recently on a truck scale. 2370kg in total!


Is it per tire or for all four together?
We weighted our Delica including camping gear and two people recently on a truck scale. 2370kg in total!

Per tire "max weight 1180kg at 30psi cold"

I took the number from curb weight in the book 1380kg

Max weight is stated at 2505kg, You were full!


Thanks for the help....

are you running stock height? or with torsion bars cranked?

alignment and tbars don't do this.

a poor alignment will wear down either the outer or inner section of the tire. Not both sides.

I see one of 3 things :

likely : under inflated tires will push the outer edge up and cause both sides to wear like in the pic

unlikely : bad batch of tires. tire defect.

highly unlikely : bad bearings causing both tires to wobble wearing out the outer edges. you'd noticed this.

The compound on the mickey t's is very soft. it wouldn't take took long to start an even wear on both outer sides on concrete under inflated.

I wouldn't run those over 29 psi ever. You will notice a more comfortable ride around 25-28 psi on the road. Most mud tires are like this.

I wouldn't run those over 29 psi ever. You will notice a more comfortable ride around 25-28 psi on the road. Most mud tires are like this.

well.. he claims to be at 38 PSI which would be OVER inflated, that would cause the reverse of this problem, I'm starting to think it's likely a load rating thing... If they're rated for 1100 for the set, and the deli is 1300 empty, that would be the problem...

Do you figure the 1180kg rating is for all 4 combined? I can't seem to find any information on that.

When I was last in the city i went to 2 tire places for advice. The first guy said he had never seen that, and the second said it was classic underinflation and told me to bring it up from 35 to 38 psi. I did and the problem remains a few thousand later.

Of note when the Deli came out from Japan there was uneven tire wear on the non-compliant japan tires. The alignment was also very out at that time, so I figured an alignment would fix it when i bought these.

She runs smooth with perfect alignment as far as i can tell.

The Deli is stock, no lift.

Green1 wrote:...the deli is 1300 empty...

Are you sure about that?
I would say a empty Delica is more likely in the 2000kg range. Otherwise I have no idea how we stuffed 1000kg in our car just for a weekend trip.

The "loadindex" of a tire is usually per tire and not for a set of four.

fexlboi wrote:

Green1 wrote:...the deli is 1300 empty...

Are you sure about that?
I would say a empty Delica is more likely in the 2000kg range. Otherwise I have no idea how we stuffed 1000kg in our car just for a weekend trip.

I was just repeating what was said by bosc

bosc wrote:I took the number from curb weight in the book 1380kg

flexlboi wrote:The "loadindex" of a tire is usually per tire and not for a set of four.

That's the part I was unsure of.
if it's per tire than he should be good there too... so it really doesn't leave any good reason.

As a side note on weight I was geocaching and part of the
requirement at this cache was to weigh your vehicle and
post a picture. Mine was at 2060 kg's which wasn't loaded up.

There are only 2 possibilities for this type of wear....under inflated or overloaded. Well, three really...you could also have the wrong size rim. There is no other way to get this type of wear.

As far as the weight rating goes, every tire has a rating on the sidewall, this is 100% per tire. So if it states 1100kg, then with all four it would be 4400kg capacity.

There is also the possibility that you forgot to reinflate your tires after an offroading trip...(I've done this myself )

I wouldn't run them at 38psi if I were you, not if the max inflation states 30psi. When they put the max pressure rating on the tire, it is for inflating a COLD tire. This allows room for expansion under heat. If your at 38, you could be asking for big trouble, especially now that they're worn badly.

Jesse Smith
Parkside Automotive
604-309-7718

A little hard from the photo to see exactly what's going on...

Certain types of tires are prone to unusual wear patterns, for example some of the cheap lug (mud) tires that some JDM dealers like to install and Yokohama Geolanders.

As mentioned above, load is PER tire, so you add up the loads of all four to get the total capacity.

Cold tire pressures should not be exceeded.

A tire store should only mount tires on the correct rim size for the tires in question, but stranger things have happened.

I would take a serious look at some of the common Delica issues: Ball Joints, Tie Rod ends - inner and outer, and wheel bearing adjustment. Also, we find that many Delicas have seized caliper and/or caliper pins. Are the automatic hubs unlocking properly?

~John

Just looking at the tire picture again...

The tire looks like it has been both seriously under-inflated and also seriously over-inflated. Scalloped edges are usually an alignment issue.

Some better photos would help.

I take it that that is a front tire?

One more note (the "edit") - that these are a noted as a tube-type tire on MT's website - which should not be run at low pressures or you will overheat the tubes/tire combo and you could suffer a blow out. If you run low pressures, you MUST keep your speeds very low. At 10 PSI, you should probably not exceed 20 or 30 Km/Hr.

Belted (non-radial) tires are generally a poor choice for on-road driving, will return poor fuel economy numbers, and have accelerated wear compared to a radial.

The handling of belted tires is usually poor when compared to almost any radial tire, even a fairly cheap one.

Traction of belted/bias tires is not a good as a radial of the same tread pattern.


~John