Lexustom

So I'm showing off the new IS350 to a buddy of mine. Oh how he loves the car! Then, he looks at the tires and asks me if I noticed that the arrows on the Dunlops are pointing backwards on the left side. I hadn't yet picked up on that. They were mounted inside out on the front and rear of the left side. I called the dealer and asked if driving the car that way would ruin the tires. He said only if I drove it a few hundred up to a couple thousand miles would it hurt them. I've only gone 90 miles so far.

Anyway, they are sorry and will I please bring the car in for the correction to be made. They'll have a car waiting for me to use. But......look at the time I'm wasting just because of carelessness. If they can't mount a tire correctly, can they change the oil? How about anything else? Oh well, we're all human. I'll just monitor all this much more carefully from now on.

Oh, and the dealer said that that is the probable reason I'm experiencing what I believe to be more road/tire noise than should be.

Thanks, I feel better now that I've complained!

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

Just curious, did you swap out the wheels / tires for an optional set or are these the OEM ones that came on the car from Japan?

Lexustom

Good question. The dealer took the original Japan wheels and sold me chromed ones so they were the ones that de-mounted and re-mounted the tires. I wasn't the factory that messed up.

mcfly

No, the dealer can't be trusted to change your oil.
No, the dealer can't be trusted to mount your tires correctly.
Yes, dealerships are evil.

This is why I haven't had any car I own at a dealership for anything other than necessary recall work for a decade or so. There are too many monkeys paid to work on cars that don't know or care the first thing about doing the job correctly.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

umm..... they don't need to dismount and mount the tires again?? just swap the left and right wheel, less than 5 mins?

mcfly

Yes, they do need to remount them. The right sides are correctly mounted. The lefts are not. He has directional tires. If they just swapped sides, you'd then have your right side tires rotating in the wrong direction.

e-man

Wait a minute. Rom is right. As long as the correct side of the tire is facing out, then all you would need to do is switch them with the other side (unless, of course, the tires were a mismatched set). Think about it. If all of the tires were mounted on the rims properly (with the proper side of the tire facing out), then it should be a simple swap.

Can I ask a dumb question? Does the side wall of a tire look the same on both sides? In other words, can you take a directional tire that's mounted on a rim on one side of the car and use it on the other side of the car by taking it off the rim, flipping it over and remounting it? I think this is where the confusion is.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

ohoh, sorry, so it's just one side mounted wrong. then yeah, they have to redo it. what a careless mistake....

mcfly

Directional tires does not mean asymetric. Directional tires do not have an "OUTSIDE". It doesn't matter what side faces out provided the direction of rotation is correct.

He has one side where the tires are mounted correctly. He has another side of the car where the tires are mounted backwards. The only way to fix that is to flip the tires on the rims for the side the dealer screwed up.

Asymetric tires are a completely different issue. However, they don't have a directional orientation. As long as the "OUTSIDE" label is on the outside, you can move them to any corner of the car you want.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

well but the right side is mounted right, so basically they mounted two tires on the wheels that's to be used in the right side. can't just swap them, won't work

and for diretional tires, both sides of the tires are "face", depending on which side of the car you put on. it's only for assymetric tires that there is a outside and inner "face"

e-man

Now I understand. I was under the impression that all tires had an "outside" and an "inside."

By the way, what did you mean by "Hello, anyone home?" It's not in your post, but it is in the e-mail I received saying that you responded to the post. That's why I said I needed to ask a dumb question. I know directional tires are made to roll in only one direction. I just didn't know whether or not there was an "inside" and an "outside" or whether both sides of the tire were the same. Now I know.

BobsGX

Since the dealer made the mistake, after the changeover, I would not let them even put air in a tire. Find another dealer. Thats as bad as a motorcycle dealer putting tires on backwards. They all have directional arrows. Reminds me when my brother went to pick up his new 06 Harley and the dealer changed the wheels because my brother didn't want the high maintenance wire wheels that the bike came with from the factory. So the dealer mounts both tires backwards and in the process they somehow bent one of the front disc brake rotors and when they changed it, they mounted that rotor backwards. Needless to say my brother got his deposit back and purchased the bike from another dealer. There are a lot of half assed mechanics out there that just keep looking at the clock till quitting time. Anything in between doesn't really matter to them.

pita2go

something that is used often when i was a euro car man.. one word: stealership

flipside909

Yeah thats usually the dealer's fault, or the company they sublet to for the chroming and tire install. It's unlikely Lexus would let the tire be installed incorrectly as they are checked leaving the factory, at the port and PDI when it first comes to the dealership.

mcfly

No, it isn't wrong. Look on a directional tire. You won't find anything that indicates a given side has to face OUTSIDE, unlike an asymetric tire. This is due to tread design.

You can flip a directional tire on a wheel, you can't flip an asymetric tire (because the "OUTSIDE" would then always face IN).

Flipping a directional tire on a rim is handy on a car with staggered wheels/tires like the IS and my S2000. If you run a lot of camber you can get more wear out of the tires by flipping them on the wheels and then swapping sides of the car those tires were originally mounted on (i.e. the direction of rotation stays correct, but the inner tire tread now becomes the outer tire tread).

I have the Kumho's I run on my S2000 (very aggressive rear camber) flipped at around 10k miles, and I manage to get 20k miles on the set of tires. Without flipping them on the rims, I'd probably only manage to get 12k miles before the inner tread blocks were down past the wear bars.

I'll decide whether or not to go through the trouble of flipping the tires on the IS when I see how bad the camber wear is (although my guess is it's set up pretty tame from the factory... i.e. not much negative camber).