yellowvert

Imagine my surprise when I was washing my wife's Z the other day and saw that the back tires are truly bald and the fronts won't pass inspection. The car has 12,000 miles. This is a daily driver on the highway to work and back. It has NEVER had the tires spun. It has never been on a track. The 3 times of driven the car, she yells at me if I take it over 4500 rpm or take a corner too fast. It has whatever came on the car....Bridgestone Potenza I think. And I DO check the tire pressure on all of my cars about once a week (part of the Saturday ritual). They are always at the posted 35 lbs.

My daily driver is a `08 Corvette 6sp. I drive my car in a fairly mild manner but its been on the track, I've spun the tires and Corvette stock run flats are NOTORIUS for horrible tire wear....I got 15K on my first set on this car.

I'm ticked that I've got to go spend like $1,000 on a set of tires for this car.

Is this typical for Zs? Have others had this experience? Anyu luck with Bridgestone or the dealer? (I expect not)

So, suggestions on tires? Ain't going to be B-stones, that's for sure. Tire longevity and cost are more important than performance.

Thanks guys!

davidv

iTrader: (2)

Some tires last 5,000 miles. Others 30,000 miles. There is a wide selection of tires suitable for both cars.

VO...

iTrader: (25)

Moved...

Waiz

iTrader: (57)

LOL at you spending $1K on stock tires.

GalvatronType_R

iTrader: (5)

You may not have noticed but the stock Potenzas have a treadwear rating of 140. That means that the rubber compound used is very sticky and therefore, made of softer, easier to wear rubber. Many people argue that treadwear doesn't mean squat but I argue that it means that the lower the number, generally speaking, the higher the rate of wear. Also, because the Z is a high HP rear drive car, naturally you will wear out the rears fast even with normal driving.

You getting 12K miles "only" out of a 140 TW tire should not be a surprise at all if you researched the car prior to purchase and set reasonable expectations accordingly.

yellowvert

Waizz, was this a constructive response, other than to increase the number of posts you have?

I didn't buy new tires yet. I didn't research new tires yet. I didn't spend anything yet. LOL away....

yellowvert

Galv: Thanks. Yours was a constructive response, although I did assume the tire rating was somewhere in this range. In retrospect, I could have saved typing by simply asking if 12,000 miles was a standard wear rate for this car and the stock tires. For no apparent reason, I had an expectation that the tires would last longer, especially on my wife's car with no hard driving. I based this on a completely irrelevant experience (primarily) - that being my first hand experience with Corvette through this decade. I apparently wrongly assumed that the run flatsG M installs, while effective, were fairly unique in their horrible tire wear. My only direct experience is with a friends 2004 Touring which got >20K miles but the tires weren't the same.

So, based on your response, I'll assume that I should not be surprised by this and just accept it as a cost of owning the Z. Not a problem, just doesn't make me happy!

Thanks

NismoZ_840

iTrader: (3)

Wife secretly belongs to a midnight drift club?!?

I have video evidence, she has madz skillz too!!!

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Seems like excessive wear for a lightly driven car. Is the wear even? Do you have particularly abrasive roads(e.g. chip seal)? Do you have to fill with air regularly? Funny you wouldn't notice if you checked pressure that often. I've got 13k miles on an 08 Nismo w/ stock Bstones and not close to bald, far from new though. I drive it pretty aggressively too (frequent spirited canyon runs). Probably good for another 3-5k I'd guess.

Spike100

Hi yellowvert,

I read your message and would like to respectively offer some comments.

1) The early Z’s had problems with tire feathering on the front, but that is corrected. You shouldn’t experience this on your newer Z car.

2) Although summer performance tires wear quickly compared to other classes of tires, wearing-out in 12K miles is a rare experience unless there has been aggressive or poor driving. Reading your report, that isn’t the case in your instance. With conservative driving, you should expect to get near 20K on the rears, and even more on the fronts.

So… here are some factors that might explain excessive wear on your Z’s summer performance tires:

1) If you spend time driving on the expressway with slow driving (even stop-and-go driving), you will wear your summer performance tires quickly. That’s especially true if you rev-up (and that’s just a “minor” rev-up in traffic) to catch-up and then apply braking to stop or slow for the traffic in front of you. If you drive “smooth” in traffic, you get better wear-results than if you apply power and then apply braking. Any time the car “dips” on the suspension, you are wearing the fronts excessively, and getting to that point means you are wearing the rears more than you should.

2) If you apply braking and slow the car before the turn, and then apply power as you enter and complete the turn; you save a lot of wear over braking inside the turn. That’s not mentioning that braking inside a turn is an awful driving-method that wears your summer performance tires quickly. I’m not describing sliding/drifting, but just saying that stressing your tires in a turn is never a good idea (and that can happen at fairly low speeds). The best way to keep you tread intact is a smooth transition during your turns. If you are not applying power at the middle (or at least the terminus of your turn), you are doing excessive wear on your tires.

The Z is a great handling car. It’s not unlike driving a go-cart (it’s that responsive). Drive it wrong, and you will wear even the best tires at an excessive rate.

--Spike

GalvatronType_R

iTrader: (5)

No problem.

Spike and the others have a point, 12K even on 140 TW tires seems a bit low but from my experience, it's not unusual. Tire wear is like gas mileage, there are many determinant factors, i.e., driving style, weather, tire pressure, road condition, car condition, etc. Also, just speaking from my own experience, those who I've met who have claimed to get extremely high miles out of low TW sticky summer tires have worn them way below the 2/32" safe level.

So what's the solution? As a Vette driver, you will already know the remedy: buy a higher TW tire but there is a trade off. GENERALLY SPEAKING, higher TW means that while they may last longer, those tires' harder rubber compound will yield less grip both wet and dry (and may be louder because of said harder rubber compound). Also, just a personal anecdote but the higher TW/harder rubber tires I've owned have also surprisingly had softer sidewalls so there may be a handling compromise as well.

Still, if your wife doesn't track the car, there is nothing wrong with getting a high TW rating tire or even all seasons, I just wanted to submit the compromises of going in that direction.