Tony

Not to **** anyone off but I have a 99 GS 400 with factory everything with no modifications. 17 inch Factory Chrome wheels and the original crappy Bridgestones. My car has 15900 miles on it, I rotate the tires and balance them at the local Firestone dealer every 6000 miles. I have never realigned the car and it drives perfectly straight, no shimmy problems at high speed either, the car drives like a dream. My tires still have another 8-10000 miles on them with absolutely even wear on all four.

I am a pretty non aggressive driver

Just letting you know is all.
hope this helps

Best wishes

Tony

drmanny3

Hi, again now 4 thousand miles since my last post here. My tires still are holding their own. I am seeing fairly even tire wear all around. I was seeing more wear on the inside and outside but even, so I put in 2 lbs more air pressure in each tire. After another 2 thousand miles the wear is a bit more even. So in retrospec I can say that having that Ventura Toyota/Lexus service technician adjust the alignment with my Ltuned springs and bilstein shocks in mind made the difference. He acknowledged that it was important not to just follow the specs, but to adjust with the springs in mind. This is the first time after having the car for two years that the tires are wearing as they should.

TXSTYLE

iTrader: (1)

What up peeps! As I promised, I have "carefully" been monitoring my tire wear! As of this date, I'm looking pretty damn good in "all-around" wear! And I recently took a little Road Trip over to Shreveport for a little gambling. I think that was about a 700-800 mile trip. The morning after I returned, I got under all 4 sides to check out the Toyo's and they are still evenly "MEATY!!!" Now another thing I wanted to pass on is that initially I was running @ 33 psi in all 4 as a reccommendation by both my dealership shop guys (who install tons of low profile 18's on SC430's) and I believe a couple of people here also. After a long talk with a buddy of mine (he runs 19's too, 315/25/19 in the rear!!!) he suggested a higher psi @ 37-38. So for the past couple of weeks I've maintained a 37.5 and check em' every couple of days w/ my digital tire gauge. I think this maybe an optimum number for those of us running such low profile tires!

robertito

Had my 5,000 mi. checkup yesterday ('01 GS300, full stock, Invicta tires). Mechanic states that he noticed slight inside front tire wear (toe-in), and that the policy is that next time I bring the car in, they will provide a free alignment.
They will not align for free unless customer comes in complaining of the problem.
Says that on the assembly line, they try reeeeel hard to get the specs right, but often they miss. So now, after rotation, I get to have the other two tires worn unevenly until I get back there. I don't want to wait very long.

This is pretty weird; I am required to "complain" about the wear on the rear tires, when the problem is the front alignment.

jhuzzee

Did you have spacers in the front and rear? How many millimeters?

TXSTYLE

iTrader: (1)

No, they came ready to bolt-up! Just added hub-rings, which is pretty typical for after-market wheels.

TXSTYLE

iTrader: (1)

Ran into another GS owner at the gas station who had a 2000 GS4 and he initially inquired about my rims and other mods, but then he too mentioned the fact he had just changed out his 2nd set of tires and that the last set had "significant" inside wear! He spoke with his dealer and they suggested (of course ) he get an allignment. I told him about CL and how we're all trying to battle this. I gave him my advice to keep at least 37 psi of air, and to get an allignment w/ each oil change!

enginyr

Ive been running 37 psi like you suggest TXStyle...Tires look great.

TXSTYLE

iTrader: (1)

Exacellent! I also suggest getting one of those "digital pressure gauges from Radio Shack! Very handy indeed!

enginyr

If anyones interested.....


http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=1817123399

TXSTYLE

iTrader: (1)

Slightly off topic, but I am truly amazed at how well these low-a** profile tires are absorbing/protecting my precious rims! I every so often hit some imperfection in the road and when I go to inspect them...........No Problemo! Thanks TOYO!!!

TXSTYLE

iTrader: (1)

Going in for yet another allignment tomorrow (got the LIFETIME deal ) I'll post up my specs tomorrow!

Zulfie

All,
So, the fix for this issue is run the tires @ 37 PSI, and get an alignment every 3K miles. Excuse my French, but that seems like a pretty ****ty fix for this issue.
There's got to be be a TSB on this issue somewhere....

whitels

If it can be aligned correctly but needs to be realigned after 3000 miles, isn't it obvious that something is giving way? I heard this before on the MR2 club and the solution was to tighten the alignment screws a little bit more than specs. One accomplished autocrosser even had to use a breaker bar just to "tighten" the nuts on the suspension. That held the settings for good.

Zulfie

That sounds like another alternative that can be tried. Anyone going in for an alignment anytime soon, maybe they can ask for them to past specs, maybe a turn or 2 past spec torque.

As someone mentioned earlier in this post, it is probably a combination of things in the suspension, but its probably one expensive fix for Lexus, so they probably won't publish any TSB's on it. IMO....