Well, just had the Nissan engineers inspect my car with my 2nd set of tires (S03's this time) with 6000 miles on them and had heel toe wear pattern pretty bad.

They stated that alignment was within proper specs and wear pattern on tires is normal. I guess that means the Z is designed to cause a heel toe wear pattern?

I am going to call Jamie at NNA one more time as the final chance. If they refuse to fix the car then it will be arbitration or lemon law buy back for me.

I am so dissapointed and mad. I had really hoped that Nissan would step up and actually try and fix the problem, but I have lost all faith.

Word of warning to all potentia Z car buyers: your tires will only last 4000-9000 miles before your sports car sounds like an offroad truck with mudder tires on it. Shortly thereafter the tires will be so destroyed you will need to spend $1000 in tires every 10-15k miles.

So much for low maintenance.

 

Nissan is going to lose alot of customers this way. I've been having issues with pinging on my Max and Nissan tech support and NNA tells me "its normal". Time to move on to something different....

 

Jamie Foust at NNA bascially said the engineers did not find anything wrong with the car and felt the noise from the tires is normal.

The engineers had no official position about the heel toe wear pattern and would not give any official review as to whether the wear on the tires was normal or not. WOW sounds like they are ducking that one something fierce.

Basically Jamie said there is nothing else they will do to the car at this point. Of course there was the promise that the engineers will be reviwing data from all the cars tested over the next few months. Well guess what -- everyone is being told that the tire problems are either their problem or there is nothing wrong --- wanna take a guess at the engineering evaluation?

Another 350Z going to be bought back by Nissan. Man this really sucks.

 

Jelledge,

Were you watching the engineers when they inspected the car? What exactly did they do? I have a 2004 on order and I'm really concerned about this tire feathering fiasco.

 

So... anyone still interested in a protest in front of NNA's headquarters? This is T O T A L L Y unacceptable behavior on nissans part. They could ATLEAST give us the NISMO S-Tune suspension at cost to correct this flaw. *sigh*

 

Sorry no I had to work today, but I did get a very thorough update from Jamie as to what they did.

I tried to make her admit that the tires had the heel toe wear pattern and were wearing abnormally. But she would not say that and only commented that the "road noise was within normal limits". Of course I said you have got to be kidding as the damn car sounds like a off road truck.

Even my wife drove the Z the other day and asked why the car makes so much noise...

From the conversation with Jamie the engineers did the following tests:
1. checked overall condition of car and suspension - no issues
2. Tire pressure - no issue - I checked the night before
3. Checked alignment themselves and said it was in spec.
4. Road tested the car to see about the noise. However they only put on 2 miles on bad bumpy roads. How the hell are they going to hear road noise.

Basically it sounds like a waste of time and they are just covering their butts. The cupping / feathering on the S03's is really bad now and can't be missed. Some of the treads blocks are raise/ lowered about 1/8".

Personally I think Nissan is sending out all of these engineers to inspect cars and "find nothing wrong" so that they will have this to present in case of lawsuits. Nissan can say that their highly trained engineers found nothing wrong and the crazy, lazy, fat americans are just lawsuit happy.

whew--sorry for the rant --- I am pissed right now.

 

I feel your pain man...I'll never have another Nissan, this is just bullsh!t. Personally, I'm just biding my time until I have a buyback case. I'd love to get rid of this car right now, but the market value is ridiculous. Unfortunately, its going to take me 5+ trips to the dealer for the set of tires I'm on because they keep screwing up my car. I just can't wait to get rid of this piece of ****....