They give you a sheet that says that they don't know the manufacture specs, with the alignment before and after. I took mine to Big O tires worst idea of my life..

 

make sure you get your toe in spec if you are to do the alignment... the toe will wear your tires more than the camber will.

 

Hi, I have also been having some pretty severe wear on the inside edge of my front left tire. I would like to know what's causing it before I simply replace the tire and run into the same problem again. Please take a look at the pictures and let me know what you all think.

The wear area is a very thin band (~1”) that does not go all the way around the tire. At first I thought it could be alignment but I would expect the wear area to start at the edge and move more towards the middle of the tire – ie it’s not wide enough. Then I thought it must be rubbing on something but the band doesn’t go all the way around the circumference of the tire.

I also thought maybe it could be caused by under steer but since it's the inside edge of the front left tire that would suggest I'm under steering on left turns. This does not make sense since the front right tire is wearing normally and you would expect to see more under steer during right hand turns than left hand turns since they're usually tighter.

Has anyone seen anything like this?

1st photo: The damaged area.
2nd photo: 180 degrees from damaged area.
3rd photo: Thumb shows start of lead in to damaged area.

 

That's what mine look like, just not quite as bad. In another few thousand miles it would. I assumed it had to be a camber issue since it was a more or less continuous wear rather than just feathering. But, the guy at the tire shop said that improper toe setting could do the same thing and from what I understand 'toe' is the only adjustable parameter on the fronts of these cars. So I'd guess its either that or the stock camber angle sucks.

The only other thing I can think of in that case is damage to the front suspension, wrong tire size for the rim, or chronic under inflation.

 

i have gone through multiple sets of tires. as stated above, as the car ages, the springs sag and the bushings wear. since the camber arms are fixed, there is no adjustment available to over come this. also, under inflated tires will cause both inside and outside tire wear (which will really make the inner tire wear issue worse).

the best i can recommend is this:

1) get alignment
2) if they tell you front camber cannot be brought back to spec, install front camber kit
3) align car again, things should be to spec now
4) keep your cold tire pressure true. 1 psi over wouldn't be bad to take some of the wear off the edges. never run with lower pressure than spec'd.
5) get a tire that is NOT asymmetrical. this will allow you to dismount and remount side to side. this way, after 5-10k miles, any excessive inner tire wear gets moved to the outside, extending overall tire life.
6) also check UTQG of the tire you select, if you don't mind some dry loss, get the highest you can find that is symmetrical.

yes as an fyi, i've had:

the original bridgstones
2 sets of michelin ps2's
currently running michelin a/s plus (rears almost gone)
thinking about the yoko avid envigors for my next tire of choice

 

Thanks for the feedback. Do you think an alignment at a independent shop will be able to put it back to spec or do you think I should just bring it to the dealership?

WRT Tires I was thinking Bridgestone Potenza RE-11, thoughts?

 

Deets attached.

Toe was out quite a on both wheels. Hopefully everything should be fine now. I replaced all four tires with Potenza RE-11's from tirerack.com.

 

How are ur tires doing? My tires have the same kind of wear, like a deep ring, around the whole tire.

 

You should take your car in for an alignment.