08/09 Tire Wear

[maguzma]

My car has 21K miles on it and I took it down for a tire rotation. The service rep called me and told me I need to look at my two front tires (OEM). The inner tread was almost bald to the thread. I asked what could have caused the irregular wear and he said aligment should have been done. I reported that I had the ront struts replaced due to warranty issues and that the mechanic should have alerted me (a long time ago) of the wear. So I had to purchase two new RSAs. The mechanic reported that M35 07 and below had a TSB about abnormal wear of the front tires. My question - is this a common problem for M35"s (07-09)? Also, I did not purchase the tires there since they were close to 500 bucks for two. I carefully drove down the street and made a few calls to local tire dealerships. I was going to replace all the tires with Conti's (about 800 bucks for all four) but found two replacements for 380 bucks out the door. When I got the front tire changed the tire dude told me that my rears have about 4 months left on them. So I came home and did some internet research on the lowest price of the Goodyear RSAs and found out that Saturn Vues have the exact tire size as our M's. So I called a place and reported that I had a 2008 Saturn VUE V-6 and they said that the tires were 120 buckes each. So I bought two and then had a local tire store install for 10 bucks each. But I did send a not so kind email to my local Infinit dealership reporting that after my last visit (earlier Friday) I was not alerted of the tire status and if I did not get my tires rotated I would not have noticed the extreme wear and could have had a major accident if I had one or two front blow outs. I ended with a Lessons Learned statment "after every work performed by Infiniti that the service rep carefully go over every issue notated on the checklist to avoid a possible Catastrophe(s)". Yes I wanted Conti's but after buying four new Goodyear RSA's under 650 I guess I can live with it. The tire guy also reported that he noticed Infiniti cars under inflate the tires and put a little extra air in mine and the ride is amazing.

[kmiles]

Sorry to hear about your tire problems. My personal opinion is that you would be far better off replacing the RSA's with any other performance tire. I've had the RSA's as OEM on two cars and they both became different cars when I replaced them with a better tire. Increasing inflation alone does not resolve the problems with the RSA's. They will still tramline, wear poorly and have poor traction and cornering. From what I've seen on this forum, the two best tires for the car are the Continental Extreme DWS and the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus. There are lots of other good tires out there, and most of them considerably better than the OEM tires. IMHO.

[maguzma]

I agree there a better tires but like a sucker I bought two to match the rear but later found out that the rear needed to change too (not immediatly) but I think that for $630 bucks for 4 new RSAs is still a good deal. The only other better deal I found were four Potenza's/Coopers and Nankooks for less but did not like the treads they looked too sporty with less rubber. But the question still remains do M35's have a problem with front inner tread premature wear?

[kluken]

Doesn't the M have negative camber in the alignment like BMW which puts more wear on inner tread? I know the 2011+ M has negative camber. It helps handling, not sure how much, but I'm leaning toward asking the dealer to align the car to neutral camber.

[About Tree Fiddy]

I have about 24k miles on my '09 Sport with the B'stone RE050A tires and have no wear bars showing. I should be able to get a few thousand more miles out of them. Since these are pretty low tread life tire plus the fact I've only had them rotated once I'm pretty happy with the tire life. I've seen no uneven or unusual tread wear.

[maguzma]

The tire guy mentioned thatM's do have negative camber to give them a sportier feel and ride. So he suggested that they change tire angle settings to normal.