For some unknown reason, the front right tire got a crack about half an inch long at the edge of the treads yesterday. It's leaking very fast. One can hear the sound of air going out. I don't think the tire is repairable because the crack is close to the sidewall. These tires are about 15-month old. The tread depth of the front left one is about 7/32. The rear two are close to 8/32. Now my question is should I replace all 4 of them? Can I just replace one or the front two? I see people recommend replacing all 4 for AWD and that's probably the best performance. But these tires are expensive and relatively new. If possible, I'd like to save some money. Thanks for reading and for any suggestions.

 

how many miles on the tires? 8/32s sounds pretty new so I think you should be ok buying a pair of new tires and put them on the front and put the two best of the remaining on the rear. I assume you can still find the exact same size/model tire? Your car is not really in AWD all the time - its mostly a FWD car until the computer senses slippage and tells the center differential to lock.

 

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I can find exactly the same tire. I can't remember how many miles on them. But they were put on at the end of 2018. Due to the CONVID19 virus, the car was only driven twice since the middle of March. So practically, it's about 15 months. I drive about 20 miles to commute on weekdays. So I will estimate about 8000 miles on them.

 

You can just replace the one tire.

 

Thanks. Will the tread depth difference cause any issue or is it small enough to ignore?

 

It won't cause an issue. The days of needing to replace all 4 at a time were many years ago when Volvo used a viscous coupling for the AWD.