rxbob23

Hi guys,

I've gained alot of knowledge on this great web site and I really value all your opinions and insight to our cars. I was wondering if any of you guys had trouble with abnormal inside tire wear with your stock OEM tires. I have a 2004 GS430 with only 8500 miles. I work about 3 miles from home.

I recently found out that my right (passenger) front tire is completely bald on the inside. My local America's tire where I usually buy my tires for my other cars inspected the tire and said it was pretty bald and it could blow any time. They were nice enough to put on my spare.

I took my car to my local Lexus dealer to see what they could do. My point to the service advisor was that even though I have only 8500 miles that the OEM tires should last until about 14 to 15k miles.

I'm a pretty mild driver and never take sharp corners or push the car at all. The other 3 tires are o.k. The service advisor said he would give me a discount for the alignment and only charge me $99.95 as a good will gesture instead of $139.95. I told him that Lexus should stand behind their product more so than just "It's out of warranty." Another suggestion was that it may be excessive negative camber issue.

I've always taken my car to this dealership too. I just had my last oil change done there where they rotated my tires and set tire pressure to 32 psi. Basically it was the 5K service.

I took my copy of the workorder and called 1-800-25-Lexus and explained my frustration to the advisor & she said a Dept. Rep should be contacting me in 2days or so.

Have any of you had issues with the OEM tires? I thought Bridgestones were supposed to be pretty decent tires. While reading different threads in the Tire forum I found out that many of you like the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S. Maybe later on I'll buy these tires as replacements. Anyways, still frustrated that a $58K car could have tires that wear out this fast.

Thanks for your input.

PHML

iTrader: (33)

Moving to Tire Section.

Btw....Bridgestone/Firestone tires suck!! I had 2 of them blow on me within 2 weeks on my Integra.

My GS came with Goodyears on my 16s....they're OK...no complaints.

My first set of aftermarket wheels were Michelin Pilot Sport A/S....love them...grips like crazy in wet and dry. I ran them for about 6 months...now in storage....Im on sponsored Dunlop Direzzas.....I like these too....great sidewall strength.

Good luck.

Pete

Nevada3

Wow, that's some low mileage! It definitely sounds like the alignment is the problem (not the tire itself) and an alignment adjustment should fix the problem. I think that is hillarious they are going to knock the price down from $140 to $100. Now you're just going to pay a reasonable amount for an alignment instead of an inflated stealership price-too funny! When you talk to the Lexus rep you may want to point out that although the excessive inside wear was only noticed after the car was just out of warranty, it probably took some time to develop and actually occured while your car was under warranty.

You may have hit a big pothole or bump or something at one point causing the alignment to get "knocked" slightly out of place, which then caused the toe-in or camber adjustment to change slightly placing more of the cars weight on the inside edge of the tire. Over-inflated tires tend to wear faster in the center of the tire and under inflated tires tend to wear both the inside and outer edge of the tire faster than the center simultaneously, so it probably was not tire pressure. I agree with Pete, stay away from Bridgestone/Firestone tires, even though some of their model tires have decent performance numbers, they have very shaky reliability for build quality.

On a side note, I also have Michelin Pilot Sports (summer version) and love them, but you don't need to spend that much money to get good tires, just stay clear of Bridgestone/Firestone! Good luck, let us know what the final outcome is.

Robert