I have close to 20,000 miles on this set of 215/45/17 Sumitomo HTR Z III's that are on the stock S-lite wheels. They are a "summer performance" tire, so I guess 20,000 miles on them not all that bad.

The thing that I don't understand is that over the last 5,000 miles or so, I've noticed that the first 1" or so of inside tread is starting to wear crazy fast. You can tell by the pictures that the tires have a decent amount of tread on them all across the face of them....but that last inch or so is practically bald. It's like this on all 4 tires.

I rotate my tires every 5,000 miles. My shocks, and all the other suspensions components are fresh and in great shape. I had the car aligned last year when I got the new tires....aside from the slightly more camber in the front (-1.5 deg) from the IE camber plates in the front, I'm running close to zero toe in the front, and everything else is set at oem specs. It goes nice and straight when you let off the wheel....and I haven't hit anything that would knock anything suspension related out of place.

Any idea as to what might be wearing the insides so fast all of a sudden? It's not like I'm running crazy weird alignment settings.....this is a daily driver that see's 90% of it's miles on the highway, and 10% around town. Any ideas?

 

When's the last time you checked the alignment? That looks like you have too much toe out.

 

Had it aligned when I got the tires. I'm running around 1/32" toe in.

 

I double checked my camber setting for the front and the rear….and I’m at -2.2 deg on the front, and -1.0 on the rear. I don’t see excessive camber being an issue…….

Could it just be an issue with the tires themselves? If it was excessive toe-in…..you would see rolled up tread and excessive wear across the entire face of the tread….but that’s not the case.

 

I'd bet the camber is your culprit, based on inside shoulder wear. Your camber is not unreasonable, but will affect the wear. 20K is average for the ZIII tires.

 

So that kind of wear is normal when running -2deg camber in the front at -1.0 in the rear? I would have though that to have it wear as bs as it did....it would need a lot more negative camber than that. I'm just about at OEM camber settings.

 

No,

OEM front camber is about -0.5 degrees so -2 is enough to wear the front tire inner tread blocks with normal street driving. The negative camber helps use more of the full tire when cornering at speed but only increases wear on the inner treads when going or stopping in a straight direction.

If you are using -2 degrees front camber for performance driving (Autocross or track duty) then this type of wear is to be expected with street use.

Your toe setting is fine.

Your tire wear has all four tires worn on the inner tread blocks because "you rotate them" hence all four show the same wear pattern which is OK.

 

I don't think that wear pattern is the least bit unusual ..... not only did I see that on my MINIs, I see it on my Mini ........

time for tires

 

^ This.

 

It's not the sumitomo tires and the reason why I say this is because I had them on my 350z and I put on over 25k miles before I sold the car. I had an aftermarket front control arms and rear camber links. Mind you I was running staggered wheels/tires and wasn't able to rotate them! I have sumitomo III on my mini now.

 

Toe doesn't wear tires like that, that is camber for sure. Also looks like it could be slightly caused by low pressure. On the next tires you may bump the air up 2-4 psi.

 

camber. The factory R56s rear camber is around -1.8 degrees if I remember correctly.

 

I'm running -1.0 deg of rear camber in the rear....oem specs. Doubled checked it over the weekend.