@ ~17k miles, my rear tires are worn out on the inside (only about an 1" or an 1" and a half. The rest of the tire still looks good, but that inside strip on both rear tires are bald.

Is this a problem, anyone else experience this?

Should I take it in for this? I did have my front tires replaced for free due to the tire feathering/allignment issue before.

 

The rear end of the 350 has a high amount of negative camber from the factory. This will cause a seemingly uneven wear pattern on the rear tires. This wear will be excelerated by agressive driving (burning out, drifting, agressive cornering).

It is to be expected with the design of the system.

To see what I am talking about, stand about 20 feet back from your car and look at the real wheels, they are tilted inward at the top. Now look at almost any other car and notice this apparent lack of tilt.
This is part of the price we pay for a car that handles worth a crap.

 

mpol99,
I have a slightly different opinion than that express above.
Yes, we have more camber (tires lean in at top) than you may be accustomed to, which will tend to wear the tires more as you move inboard on the tread pattern. Camber does not cause a concentration/isolated wear on only one side of the tire.
I suspect you have a toe out problem. Get NIssan to buy you new tires for rear and an alignment. As additional insurance, have an independent shop check rear alignment (but don't adjust) and go to Nissan armed with proof.

 

Aftermarket springs/shocks?? If not, we do have the camber mentioned above, but on a stock setting it shouldn't have too much of a problem. Take it to Nissan and show them and I'm sure they will give you some sort of grief about "its totally normal" or "these cars come with high performance soft tires, so what do you expect" or some other nonsense.

 

Isn't there some sort of tire swapping between rims on either side that is supposed to take place at 10k so the insides are on the outsides?

Chris

 

I went to Nissan with the same problem and they basically told me to f*&# off. Service guy came out and looked at my car and said that they were worn evenly when the insides were completely bald and you could probably get a finger stuck in the outside tread. That was only at 12k miles. Next time it happens im going to a couple different shops and get them to write me up an invoice before I go back to Nissan.

 

A couple of months ago I changed rims and tires. My RE40's on the rear where worn to the wear bars.(30k no complaints). The outside tread blocks were still good. I was told that it was due to too much air pressure (35 lbs). Tire tech recommended I lower the rear pressure to 32 lbs. We'll see!

Regards

 

You should definitely get your toe checked. Camber may be aggressive on our cars, but it shouldn't cause balding of the inside like you described. My rear toe alignment was slightly off, and is actually wore the outside a bit faster, which I would never have expected with such negative camber.

 

Yes, check the toe. Also, you should take those corners faster. That'll even out the wear.

Asterix

 

I agreed with this. Sounds like this could be caused by overinflation.

 

Mine went to 35K and were replaced due to the inner edge ware. Have Pilot Sports on now. Hope to go to 70K. We'll see.

 

have the same problem with inner edgewear on my rear tires, but I think it is more of a camber problem because I have 20" rims. If you look at my car from the rear you can see the car has serious negative camber like this: /=\ I believe this is caused by the larger diameter rims (correct me if im wrong). I have seen many rear camber adjusters sold on the internet rangeing from $200 to $600 to correct this problem but i wonder if the adjusters will affect the handling of the car?

 

The size of the tire/rim combination will not affect the Camber. Only changing the ride height, lowering the car, will change the Camber. The factory default settings of -1.5 is usually too aggressive for everyday driving and you should have it reset to -1.0 which is the maximun per the Nissan specs.

Some 3rd party shops try to say that the Camber is not adjustable on the 350Z but it certainly is and they do not want to adjust then take it somewhere else to someone who will.

 

tire/wheel size will affect camber if the overall height of the tire/wheel combo is greater than what it replaced. Think about it