E46CT

I have known for years that performance oriented luxury passenger cars like the 3-Series, Lexus IS, wear their tires quicker due to alignment and soft tires. No problems there. 20-30k is what you'd expect on a typical car in this class wearing max performance summer rubber, especially with aggressive driving.

My car has 15,500 miles and the front tires look like this:



Same thing is happening to moms all over this country:

https://tanyafoster.com/lexus-safety-concerns/

bone stock grandma leased lexus. You can smell the freshly baked cookies from here.

Yep. The very inside (not the tire overall) is showing extreme wear. I'm guessing steel resides mere fractions of a millimeter under that bald 1/2" strip.

So I researched this and apparently this exact particular SPECIFIC wear pattern on the very very VERY inside edge of the front tires is common on the following vehicles:

Lexus 2IS 250/350/C
Lexus 2IS F
Lexus 3IS
Lexus RC F

Photos all over the internet of the same exact extreme inner edge wear pattern.

Why? All these cars share the same basic suspension design, if not THE EXACT same suspension design. It's a bit of an aging design and I suspect Lexus will redesign it for the next model. The theory is that the large rubber control arm bushing is too soft that it causes excessive dynamic toe change. The Germans don't have this problem as the Germans have been using thrust arms for quite a while now. Their tires wear like normal sports cars should--fast, but not abnormally uneven as with these Lexus models mentioned above. A luxury car is heavy and must be compliant and smooth. Hard to achieve at the same time while also driving sporty and with good performance.

This post is for observation and information though. If this were my 3 Series from before, I'd be on a new set of tires around 25k, so 15k isn't too crazy. But still disappointing cause the rest of the tires haven't reached the wear bars yet.

Yes my car is "lowered" on Tein H Tech, but the drop is VERY conservative--more conservative than Lexus own F Sport springs.

This is happening all over on stock cars even. If you drive calmly then you may not experience this. But i drive and corner aggressively so I'm sure my wheels are experiencing a lot of dynamic toe change basically wiggling the tires as they roll down the road.

For safety's sake, I'll replace them tomorrow. But definitely not with anything expensive. I'm thinking the Firehawk Indy 500s-- cheap and rave reviews. like top 3 tires regardless of price type reviews... I'll make sure my toe is zeroed out just to ensure i can minimize this as much as possible. And no I'm not going FIGS bushings.

Anyone try these Firehawks?



Now again, I APPLAUD sports cars and fast tire wear. That's superb--Porsche. BMW. Ferrari. Wear tires fast. all great. But the tires should wear FAST AND evenly. Not a HALF-INCH strip only. Then you're getting into dangerous territory where blowouts and resulting injury can happen. Lexus corporate, you're reading these forums and know your engineers should address this balding 1/2" strip as in the grandma link posted above on what are some of your best selling cars. A car full of kids could've flipped over! The inner tire is not easily seen and i suspect there's tons of ISs out there with inside strips ready to pop and are driven by soccer moms! The outsides of the tires look pristine still so no one would know to look.

Drawblood

This is a well known issue that Lexus needs to address.
The LSA (Lower Swing Arm) bushing is way too soft. Lexus now has a sticker on the window when you take delivery that you should only expect 15k from the tires and my sales person made sure to tell me that several times. But the inside wear is a completely separate issue.
A very popular upgrade is installing RR-Racing bushings.

http://www.rr-racing.com/Lexus-Lower...isfxlca001.htm

E46CT

Yeah It's a lease so i really don't want to jerk around with any mechanical stuff. did that for 15 years with BMWs, tuning, racing, etc. Done. I just want to comb my hair and drop it in drive. the entire point of a Lexus! =) lol

Drawblood

Lease = Drive It Like You Stole It!!

davyjordi

that's incredibly selfish as someone else is going to buy that car after you're done with it.

Sheddy

I am running Firestone Firehawks Indy 500's, awesome tires for the price!

E46CT

awesome glad to see you have them.

what mileage did you get them? did you have the same balding inner strips as me?

AWD4Mo

Camber and castor in the rear suspension are often part of the design to assist handling.....do we know that Lexus does not use this? If so, then this kind of wear is quite normal.

Sheddy

I've only had them installed for a little over 1000 miles. My car is lowered on RSR down springs, so i am experiencing increased inner tire wear on the rear wheels and the front's are not as bad. My last set were Bridgestone Potenza RE760 Sport which gave me around 15000 mile lifespan (320 treadwear).

4TehNguyen

iTrader: (1)

had 15k miles on our 14IS before we traded it, never had abnormal tire wear. Get alignment checked out? Even on our 06IS it wore evenly when alignment was good

E46CT

i could not understand anything of what you wrote there, bud.

the problem i'm having is in the front.

this *particular* wear exists on no other brand new car. this is just an engineering mishap at Lexus. This suspension is basically Toyota's second attempt at a performance/luxury blended suspension...with the first being in the first-gen Lexus IS. bmw has been at this game since the late 70s when BMW deliberately started designing a suspension that moves around (compliance), but sporty (good roadholding) at the same time--while wearing nicely and minimal harshness. The engineering philosophy was dubbed "Elastokinemtics" over in Bavaria and has been the cornerstone of just about every modern car company's luxury/sport suspension since. Yes Lexus could up the durometer/rating of the front bushing as to limit dynamic toe changes but they'd introduce a ton of harshness and noise to the cabin. So they are learning here. The next IS will have a brand new front suspension design--watch.

marsmango

I was considering installing this, since others reported this fixes the inner tire wear issue. But I'm concerned about excessive NVH as some people reported it makes the ride quality much worse than stock

E46CT

^Yeah those are PRICEY. In the BMW world, those are $80. But I guess it's just economics. Not as many IS people so the cost is high.

ExTrEmE99

iTrader: (6)

With my old 2IS (RIP) i only had inner tire wear after not getting an alignment for an extended time after installing a new suspension. Most of my tire changes were because they were bald straight down the middle. (But i do know there were many times when the tire shop/lexus would tell me about feathering when speaking of Lexus models). But I usually got around ~20k with the RE760. You also gotta know our tires are pretty thin too, so they are obviously not gonna last as long. I also believe BMW 335 uses thicker tires than any stock Lexus IS.


Stock IS250/350 18": 225/40R18.
BMW 335i is: 225/45R18

E46CT

What do you mean by "our tires are pretty thin? that has nothing to do with wear pattern, or even wear. in fact it would even mean the opposite as the sidewall would be more stable and less movement.