Pepper2

Is anyone else experiencing abnormal and uneven wear with their tires. I am religious about getting rotated and balanced, but my Goodyear Eagle GTs are needing replacment at just under 30,000 miles (They are rated to 50,000). Wonderng if the tire dealership was not aligning correctly.

Scarletti

I spoke to my dealer a few days ago about tyre rotation. TL;DR is "do not rotate tyres on an SC430".

I'd phoned a Lexus dealer's parts dept to chat about replacing the TPMS widgets and he mentioned that each of the 4 is different (Gold, Red, Blue & White... I've since read up about them, checked costs etc). Most UK dealers are Lexus owned btw, not independents and they are absolutely 1st class in my experience. I'll paraphrase/summarise the conversation with the Dealer for you:

So, Part Dept mentions "one goes on each wheel but I don't know which is which... I'll call you after checking my facts in a couple of days but if you want to chat to Service Dept I'll transfer you" (Bank Holiday weekend here you see). I thought "hang on, that can't be right as it messes up on tyre rotation". So I spoke to the Service Dept and he said "nah, 4 different ones is correct but it doesn't matter which corner has which... but it's a moot point anyway"... "the front's wear on the inside edge and the rear's wear in the middle so we don't recommend you rotate on an SC as it will handle poorly thereafter".

So there you have it, does that explain your issue?

Edit: I'd be quite happy with 30-35K miles tbh.

Note: I read somewhere that Lexus have the published tracking/toeing info slightly wrong. If a fitter follows the Lexus published instructions then it causes more wear than need be. There is a specialist performance garage in the UK (Milton Keynes I think) that looked into this in depth and came up with new "numbers" to resolve this (as much as it can be resolved).

OBP

SC430s generally got sold with a good amount of negative camber when brand new. If Lexus spec settings were used for camber in any subsequent adjustments, then the problem of inside edge wear will persist. On my part, I asked the dealership I bought my SC from in 2008 to reduce the negative camber as much as possible before taking delivery of the car. It has helped my tire wear somewhat - I have some inside edge wear but just not as bad as some of the worst stories I have heard on this forum. Replacing tires after 30k miles is not too bad at all. My Pirelli P Zero Nero RFTs are probably at 25-27k miles now and I feel I should replace them soon.

Harold57

Yes, there are 4 different TPS sensors used, one for each tire. It doesn't matter which corner any of them are on. The TPS monitor in the cabin has to be programmed when one is replaced to be able to accept and read it. Typically, this has to be done at the dealer, there may be some exceptions now though.

I regularly rotate my tires and have had no related issues.

The car can handle two different sets of TPS sensors so that the owner can keep a set of snow tires and just swap out the tires/wheels for the correct season. There is a switch inside the glove comparment to switch between the two sets.

kjcole

I also regularly rotate tires (front to back, never across). Especially important if your car tends to inside front wear - the rears won't wear so fast on the inside so with rotation you give the front tires a break and let the rears wear. I use an aftermarket TPMS that allows you to easily follow the rotation pattern (my display shows each tire pressure/temperature so you need to reset the TPMS). LIke it much more than the OEM TPMS.