dag8882

hey CL,
has any1 on CL figured out how to get the most thread life of the tires on the SC? i ask because I'm experiencing some inner tire wear on my tires and on my next set i wouldn't mind getting even wear throughout the whole tire as opposed to just inner wear. BTW ill be purchasing these tires some time this week, so if u have any expertise on the issue id really appreciate Ur advice. thanks in advance.

Harold57

I've noticed wear on the inner front tires with the passenger side being the worst of the two. The first thing to do is to make sure that you rotate the tires every 5k miles or so. At least you will have the same amount of wear on all the tires. Otherwise, you'll be replacing the fronts and then a few kmiles later the back.

I guess the answer somewhat depends on just how bad they are wearing. If they are wearing quite a bit, you might want to get your alignment checked. Whenever I get a car, I usually go to Firestone and buy their lifetime warranty alignment so I can go back whenever I want to get it checked and realigned as necessary for free.

As far as the choice of tires, there are several threads about which tires do well for the SC430. Do a search on this forum and you will find a bunch of opinions. The biggest issue to decide first is whether to go run flats or regular tires. After that, then you can choose which tire suits your driving still the best.

tromly

Do you have run flats or regular tires ??

scdroptop

iTrader: (1)

Just my two cents about prolonging tire life and what I have started doing-this mainly pertains to garage queens (not sure if yours is one or an everyday driver):

* Visually inspect the tires before they mount them-sometimes tires have been sitting, are used or are factory defects. Some MFG's admit to a 3-5% variance!!!
* Make sure they "road force" balance on machine not all do-Discount Tire does
* Check alignment, toe in, caster/camber. I'd recommend an alignment w/new tires
* Drive the car more often-even if around the block. Don't let it sit more than 3 days.
* Try nitrogen--others have had great success, may not help your situation
* Be super **** about your tire pressure-remember cold/hot weather changes it
* You cannot rotate too much-buy your tires at Discount Tire and they do it for free
* Mark the insides of your tires and where they started with a grease pencil-this helps you keep track of where a problem might be in the future.
* Rotate criss cross once a year
* Once in a while, have the tires dismounted and mounted on the opposite wheel

Just my two cents. it's a lot of work keeping high performance tires well balanced and prolonged life. That is by design $$$. I've had 30 series 20" tires last me 3, 4 even 5 years (not that many miles), but I've had 45 series tires last me one year and 12k on my old SC400 back in the day.

PHXSC

If you're getting ready to buy a new set of tires, you may want to consider non-directional tires. These give you more rotation options than directional tires without dismounting the tire. BFG Super Sports would be an example of a really good non-directional tire made by Michelin.

dag8882

Have regular tires right now, switched out the run flats only after a year of owning the car. Have a set of Dunlops right now but i thinking of a of new set of Non RF Michelin pilot sports a/s. then again, i was thinking if im not gonna get the best thread life on the Michelins is it worth spending $230/tire? A part of me is thinking of getting some nitto n/t 555s, Dunlop Direzza DZ101s, or Kumho Ecsta ASX all of which have decent ratings and much more economical, then taking scdroptop's advice as to trying to pin point problem area on the tires and make a better purchase on my next set of tires...(just a thought)
Ive got a couple of rides but honestly its between the Lexus SC and QX4 as for my daily drivers. i tend to avg about 6500 miles a yr on each car.

scdroptop

iTrader: (1)

All of those tires you mentioned are pretty good, but speaking from experience (I've owned the kuhmos and the dunlops) the Yokohama S Drives are even better and less expensive. Not to sound like an ad board for Discount Tire, but they have them now very inexpensively. FYI

Harold57

I've been considering the Yokohama YK520's. They have a 60kmi warranty and are rated pretty good. Another guy on the forum has them and thinks pretty highly of them. They are about $155 at Discount Tire. (Like scdroptop, I like Discount Tire also.)

mdpuff

I would highly recomend getting your car aligned at a reputable shop and ask them to set the camber as close to 0 degree's as possible, the OEM specs call for alot or negative camber neg 1/2 deg to neg 2 deg, (don't understand why the manufacturer would have this high of spec), this will wear tires on the inside unless you do alot of serious corner carving. I've got mine set to neg 1/4 deg and drives perfect, no premature tire wear. I'm not a corner carver so my cars don't need such high negative camber. To give you a rough idea what I'm talking about zero degree's of camber is perfectly vertical, no lean to the inside or outside. When you have negative camber the top of the tire is tilted in and with positive camber the top of the tire is tilted out, a little negative camber is fine but if your like me and do mostly highway driving and normal driving around town you don't need so much negative camber. If you have lowering springs in your car it will be much harder to align it to prevent tire wear. Hope this helps!!

scdroptop

iTrader: (1)

^^^^ Nice tip on the camber mdpuff. I had bad problems with my rx-7's doing that. I haven't even really thought about it much when I got my alignments on my SC's, but now that you mention it, I think I will tinker with that next time! Thanks!!!

dag8882

mdpuff,
and any reputable alignment shop would know what i speak of, if i told them to simply set the camber to as close to 0 degree's as possible?? Sweet mdpuff, thanks a bunch for the advice. Hope this works out.