Hey there everyone! I have had my '95 SC400 for about a year and a half now. The car is great in almost every way, looks, acceleration, sound system rocks with the Nakanichi system, gobs and gobs of power!

There's only one problem I have over and over again.. I got about 10 - 15K on the first set of tires that the seller installed when he put the car on the lot before they started feathering and making a lot of noise. I bought a new set of Khumo's because they got good reviews for low ride noise of course, I also had the car aligned. They were good tires, but after about 5K they too started to wear unevenly. I took the car back to shop that installed the tires and they re-aligned it again. The wear seemed to even up a little.

Two weeks ago, I needed to replace the rear tires due to wear as they were down past the wear bars. I went ahead and purchased a new set (4) of the new Continental Contact DWS tires on the recommendation of the shop. They were great! Whisper quiet.. It was as if I got a new stereo system. The car was once again aligned when the tires were installed.

I drive 150 miles daily for work. After only 10 days and about 1,000 miles, the noise was increasing noticably and I could feel the tires had started feathering when I ran my fingers across the tread. I stopped back at the shop and they took a look at it. They declared all was well with the suspension components. They found no play in steering or bearings or anything else. They didn't seem to think it was struts although they said after 108,000mi and 14 years, the struts could indeed be a weak link. They did acknowledge that the tires were wearing unevenly and they aligned it yet again, saying they would try to get it even closer to dead on zero error than before.

Has anybody else had the same problems or know of a possible solution? I am sick of spending $500 on tires only to have them scraped up after a couple of thousand miles.

Thanks!

 

Where is the wear located at on the tire? Can you take pictures? Have you lowered the car or done anything? Post up the records of your last alignment. Maybe we can tell you something about your alignment

 

No mods have been done to the car's suspension.. all stock. I will have to get the records. The wear is at the outboard edge, most prominantly on the driver's side front tire. The leading edges of the tread blocks are raised up slightly higher than the rest of the tread.. called feathering. If you run your finger clockwise on the tire you will feel the raised ridges of the tread blocks.

 

Depending on the mileage, these years (92-95 sc's) are known to have sagging driver's side springs, especially the front. One explanation was that until Lexus figured it out, the loading was biased for right hand drive vehicles sold in Japan and UK countries, but I can't confirm this. My car was 1/2" - 3/4" lower on the driver's side measured at the top of the wheel wells. This leaning may be causing unusual tire wear. When I bought my car, May 2009, 174,000 miles, the tires were showing the cords!

I have the original 16 X 7 10 spoke wheels. I only have 3,000 miles on the new tires and haven't observed any unusual wear yet. Hope you find the solution and share it with us.

 

Control arms, wheel bearings, inner/outer tie-rods, steering rack bushings, all these need to be checked with alignments. If you keep going back to the same alignment shop, maybe they're overlooking something. I'd check in with another shop and have those things inspected.