I've had my 08 IS250 for almost 4 years now. Just over 30K miles on it.

Like pretty much everyone else, I had bare cords on the front stock tires at ~15k miles. Replaced them with Good Year Eagle F1 All Season (was advised the carbon fiber sidewall's stiffness would likely combat the wear).

Lo and behold, I'm in today getting a flat patched, rears are basically shot (but I knew they needed to be replaced soon) and the fronts are already wearing more than they should be. Good Year Eagle F1 All Season rears are backordered about 3 weeks, but I've had a few different ideas presented to me, and wanted to get some other thoughts on it.

1. Suck it up that this car will chew tires, order the matching rear Good Year Eagle F1 All Seasons and be done with it.
2. Suck it up, but get the Good Year Eagle GT, which is available now, and a reasonable match.
3. Go buy a pair of matching stock liquid graphite rims, 18x8 (the front ones) and replace the rear rims with those. Tires...match the fronts? Haven't thought that far. (This was an idea mentioned by a dealership.)
4. Go buy new rims and tires. (Discount Tire pitched this.) Which could be 4x 18x8s or 4 19x8s.

Ideas 3 and 4 both allow for tire rotation, which should make the tires last longer. And, at least according to the service guy I talked to, using 4 front 18" wheels would have a minimal performance hit and not otherwise mess with anything in the way the car functions. I like the simplicity of the stock 18s I have (not into flashy wheels), but the cost is pretty high.

So, thoughts? I'm not opposed to spending some money on rims to potentially extend tire life, but it has to actually make a difference.

 

How about:

5. Find a competent alignment shop to fix the factory toe settings that are destroying your front tires far too quickly?



Oh...and 6. Drop the all seasons. All seasons suck, in all seasons.

 

if you dont want to take the car out of stock allignment spec which is what is causing it I would recommend buying lower cost tires that still perform well. I myself as well as other members have gone with the Hankook Ventus V12- its a great tire for the price and it dosent hurt the pocket as bad when im replacing them at 15-20k. Tire rotation would help for sure but I would go with the rears all around the 18x8.5s. The 18x8 would look even more sunken in and unless your running a track or something the .5 inches in difference from unstaggering shouldnt mess up your RWD performance noticably. I would actually do both- un staggar and go with a lower cost SUMMER/PERFORMANCE tire. Unless of course your up north where you need an all season.

 

[/QUOTE=Kurtz;6499682]How about:

5. Find a competent alignment shop to fix the factory toe settings that are destroying your front tires far too quickly?

...[QUOTE]

It seems from Kurtz's post that 15-20k is too short of a life for the tires. On my 2008 IS 350, I don't remember exactly how long my orignal summer tires - the Bridgestone ER33 tires - lasted. I disposed of them at around 43k miles, 2 years after having the car. But I had them off for about 3 months in the winter when my blizzak tires were put on.

I searched around and found an old post of mine which said that after about 11 months/17k of driving, they were at 5/32 in the rear and 6/32 in the front.

Let's see how long the Hankook Ventus V12 Evo K110 I had put on in May last. So far I've done something around 3k miles on them. Although I'm having another issue with them.

 

You got freakish lucky with those ER33s then.

Mine (same tire, the ER33) was shredded on the inside edge on the fronts at ~17k miles (like many others experienced). There was plenty of tread elsewhere on the front tires (and on the rears), but they were pretty much destroyed on the inner front edges.

I expected that, and didn't do anything to avoid it, because those tires kinda sucked and I was happy to have an excuse to replace em.

 

You are definitely experiencing an alignment issue. My 350 when I bought it had the factory Dunlops on it at 31k miles. At a 240 tread wear ratings this was definitely on the upper end of the "lifespan" scale...but just an example of what you should be looking at.

GL!