I just noticed the 08 G35 we just bought needs tires badly. The rear insides are trashed. Fronts look new. Can I get all four tires the same size and not effect the handling too much? I want to be able to rotate all four when needed and I can’t do that if the fronts are one size and the rears are another. He’s a teen so he can’t afford replacing tires every year. If this is possible what tire size do you recommend for all four wheels? Right now fronts are recommended to be 225/50/18. Rears 245/45/18.

 

Rotating tires isn't even necessary tbh, most sports cars you don't rotate tires because of the staggered and directional setup.

Tires wear unevenly due to ALIGNMENT, get the car aligned once per year and you'll be fine. Normal tire life is just a matter of how many miles you drive per year, unless you're putting 40k miles per year on the car you're not going to eat a set of tires every year unless the alignment is off or you're out racing the car.

For daily driver tires you first calculate how many miles the vehicle will be driven per year, then multiply by 5 years, this is how many mile tire you need to buy. Rubber needs to be replaced after 5 years due to chemical degredation so no point buying a 90k mile tire if you're not doing that much driving.

If you expect the vehicle to travel the national average of 13,500 miles per years it's 13,500x5 = 67,500 so you would want to buy a 70k mile tire for normal driving characteristics.

The bigger issue that I suspect you'll have is the "teenager driving a sports car", make no mistake the G IS A SPORTS CAR, yes it's a luxury sports car but ITS STILL A SPORTS CAR. The right foot will cost you a set of tires in a year if it's driven hard.

Multi-link front suspension needs to be aligned every year and every component examined for wear or you COULD be eating a set of tires per year. Every vehicle SHOULD be aligned once per year but a truck or macpherson strut budget car is a LOT more forgiving because there are only 1/3rd the moving parts on the suspension and thus few components to wear/fail and create alignment issues that destroy tires.

To answer your question though, yes you could go with a squared setup on a different set of wheels, but it's going to look a little off because your suspension setup is designed for those tires and your wheel arch height will look weird with the wrong sized tires. Your factory wheels are different widths front/rear to accomodate the staggered size tires. You cannot run a squared setup on the factory wheels because the front is 7.5" wide and the rear is 8.5" wide.

 

It’s only the rears that are bad, so I don’t think an alignment will fix that. Tires look to have only 6k miles on them and the insides are completely worn already. My son has only had the car for a few weeks, so I don’t think he could’ve done this much damage that quickly but who knows. I just missed it when I looked the car over when buying.

 

All it takes is about 20 seconds of spinning donuts in a parkinglot to completely ruin a new set of tires.

If the rears are cooked there's a good chance it was the right foot that made them that way, whether it was your son or the previous owner is hard to tell

Either way after new tires in the rear you definitely need to get it aligned so you know it's not going to prematurely wear the next set.

 

Thanks for the help! Previous owner installed Falken Pro G5 tires on the front and Pro G5 Sport tires in the rear. Don't have much experience with Falken, so I'm wondering if that is part of the problem as well. If they don't replace the tires under warranty we might just replace all 4 tires with something different and get an alignment after that.

 

oops

 

Falken is a good manufacturer, I had the UHP summer ones on my 2012 Camaro and didn't have any complaints.

Most of your name brand tires are going to be really good, the only manufacturer that really stands out would be Michelin but the gap between them and any other manufacturer isn't THAT big. You will pay a hefty premium for them though, but they are arguably "the best".

You definitely want to stick with all-season tires though unless that vehicle will never be driven in snow. I currently have the Kumho Ecsta PA51 mounted on my car, I was trying them out last fall/winter to see how tolerable the car would be in a light dusting of snow (I don't drive this vehicle if there's any REAL snow on the road) since I've been working in town lately and overall I'm impressed with them. Pretty good balance of winter grip and they still hold a corner acceptably for more spirited driving. Plus they were REALLY cheap, I think I was almost an even $650 mounted and balanced buying them through Tirerack. I definitely recommend them especially since the weight of your son's foot may be questionable while he's learning to drive normally, at worst case you'll spend another $300 on a replacement rear set of tires if he blows those Kumho's out quickly.

 

We live in Phoenix, so we definitely don't have to worry about snow. Just those 115deg summer temps. I'll see what Discount Tire has to say about the premature wear on these relatively new tires and go from there. I just went back to check out the records the old owner had on the car and it shows tires were replaced 135,400 miles and a 4 wheel alignment was completed after that at 135,469 miles. Car now has 142k miles on it.

 

Previous owner probably went out and smoked it off in a parking lot having fun before trading in the car

Or maybe HIS teenage son did!

 

Getting both rears replaced. This is them with less than 7k miles on them. When they were put on a 4 wheel alignment was done right after. This is scary to me.

 

Looks like one of the wheels is bent too. This sucks. Problems of buying used I guess.

 

That was 100% definitely caused by someone doing smoky burnouts, I've seen literally hundreds of tires like that lol.

They ALMOST popped but you would be shocked just how long a tire in that condition can still last as long as you're not smoking them off again.

 

Thanks for the confirmation. I can't believe I missed this when looking over the car. Both rear shocks are covered in rubber debris from the burnouts too. Oh well. The only thing the tire guy was questioning was why the wear wasn't all across the tire leading him to think it was an alignment issue.

On another note, you seem to be the expert on this forum and I really appreciate all the help you've been to my son and I. Do you have any thoughts on aftermarket wheels that would be direct replacements and wouldn't require adding spacers? My son wants black and since I can't find a rear takeoff so far I had told him maybe this is the time for him to replace the wheels.

 

I'm not really a wheel guy tbh, I do know you can google the specs on the wheels and just look up brands/designs that you like and order them with the same specs minus (or plus???) the spacer specs.

As long as you have bolt on hubcentric wheel spacers they are perfectly fine though, yes most tire shops won't touch the tire with the spacer so that may or may not be an issue depending on if you don't mind pulling spacers off before taking the car in for tire/wheel service.

As for the uneven wear, that's just because they were spinning the car in one direction, leans the weight out across one tire more than the other.

 

OK, gotta jump in here. The car is 13 years old, there are no takeoffs, however a used wheel should be easy to find. They are quality wheels- you have no reason to start replacing good parts- your entire emphasis should be on maintaining what you’ve got.