This got weird…

My brother barely made it out of the neighborhood this morning when he picked this up a screw with fender washer on his passenger side front tire, so I swung by to take the wheel off and run it to Costco for the road hazard warranty (tires are about a year old). Unfortunately, I found the inside edge to be worn down to the cords on both front tires. Since there was no way Costco is going to warrant that, I decided to plug it just so he could roll in to the nearest shop for tires, alignment, and whatever work it needs regarding the excessive wear (steering still tracks straight).

Well, from there it gets weird. After plugging it I spot what looks like a nail inches away. I remove that and realize it’s actually the tip of a screw that wasn’t deep enough to puncture all the way through. As I’m rolling the wheel back to the car I see two more on the other side, with one between treads. Both of those also turned out to be broken off screw tips too.

Screws wouldn’t have the leverage to break like that when they weren’t even deep enough to puncture. Only short screws with their heads at the top of the tread (not between them) could have their heads wear completely away without going deep enough to puncture. Well, one of them was clearly between treads, did not get pushed all the way down, and was also headless/broken (just the screw tip)… so it was definitely a broken/cut screw tip before it went into the tire.

Unless someone was carrying around a bunch of cut/broken screw tips and lost them in a road or parking lot, I don’t see how this can naturally happen three times to the same tire. Could it be some kind of sabotage?

This one tire had a failed TPMS sensor (other three work) but he insists it was holding air. Because of a slow leak in the passenger rear he’s been carrying an inflator and occasionally checks it since he’s adding air to another and needs to keep a closer eye on the one with no TPMS. The driver’s side front seems to have the same wear issue and I recall a loud roaring sound the last time I went some place with him… less like a bad bearing and more like excessive road noise coming right into the passenger cabin.

Even so, running low would only explain accelerated wear, not the handful of broken screw tips.

Note: All four are definitely screws. The one in the middle that looks like it flares at the top is one of those screws with blades at the tip and the “flare” is where the actual threads start (IOW, not the remnant of a screw head).