I ruined a set of tires because I listened to two diferent mechanics that said it wasn't the shocks. Shocks and a steering damper fixed my F150

 

Yeah, its possible that shocks and or struts will cause wear. The shock and or strut actually indirectly causes the wear. As the tire bounces up and down from the worn shock, the alignment angles jump in and out of range (depending on how bad things are).

I have seen a worn out strut cause DIRECT tire wear. Where the tire isnt even making contact with the ground 90 percent of the time. Its actually kind of fun, grab a lawn chair, pull up a case of (root)beer and place it next to a road with a good pot hole in it. You can see cars with good shocks/struts go over the bump, the shock absorbs the impact, and the tire maintains contact with the road. Cars with worn out shocks/struts will hit the pot hole, the tire will bounce off the ground, rebound off the ground, go in the air again, and the tire skips on the ground until the energy from hitting the pot hole is lost. Its sort of scary to watch.

One bad wheel bearing can cause both tires to wear. Once one side is off, the other side will pull against it. In other words, say you have a bad passenger wheel bearing. It will give you a negative camber reading, causing the passenger tire to push the vehicle to the left. But the drivers front tire will want to keep going in a strait line. So the passenger tire will be pushing the drivers tire out of the strait line it naturally wants to go in.

Or it could be just caused by lack of rotation...

 

Thanks everyone!

As soon as I get the time, I will check it all out. Once I find out what the culprit is/was I post back the info. Thanks again.

 

Just to post about the back end shimmy thing.

I've driven quite a few Rangers and they all do that over rough ground when there's nothing in the back. Now mind you I'm not speaking about your cupping problem, just the shimmying you mentioned in the back over rough pavement.

I've heard you can get rear stabilizer bars to correct that, but I've never explored that option before. I doubt it's the shocks, I've never seen the rear shocks wear out on a Ranger - typically the front's will wear out WAY before the rears do.

 

Thanks! ^^^

Actually my ranger has a rear stabilizer bar on it.

Of the other trucks I've owned, only this one will jump jump around like that.

The only other truck I drove that did that was a mid 80's dodge (not mine), but that thing had super heavy duty springs (read STIFF) on it.

I believe the front shocks are shot on it. If I push on the top of the fender and rock it back and forth (side to side), it still moves around after I quit.

 

Shimmy is shocks! Change the shocks they are cheap. Check the ball joints and well bearings for adjustment and wear. That front ned should be solid as a rock with good ball joints wheel bearing in proper adjustment and new shocks. Look, replacing ball joints, wheel bearings, shocks is a cinch, so easy even a blonde like me can do it. The Ranger is the best little truck ever built. Gotta get another one.