I've got an '06 350Z enthusiast. I've noticed that the inner rear 1/4 of the tire is bald after driving the car 10K mostly highway.

They are Hankook Ventus V4 245/45ZR18 all around. I'm going to chalk this kind of wear up to 3 things:

1. drifting around in the snow last december for a bit, going all the way through first and part of second from stops but only once out of like 100 stops
2. it needs an alignment
3. suspension bushings going bad causing it to over camber, sag w/e

with regard to 1 before I get jumped on, I don't put anyone or anything at risk, and I always stick to the speed limit. 10mph over and I'm done.

The fronts look good, as in normal wear you would expect after 10k miles.

Which leads me to questions:

1. has this happened to any of you and what did you do that fixed it
2. what kind of tires should I switch to? Should I replace the worn out V4's I have already? I'd consider switching brands, but I still want to have all-weather.

 

I would start with alignment since it's the easiest and cheapest thing to rule out. These cars are known for needing frequent alignment.

 

Mine do the same, it is my understanding that the Z chassis naturally has some negative camber for cornering/stability. Yours could be out of wack even more than manufacturer spec. An alignment will correct it but you'll probably still have some amount of inner wear.

Most importantly make sure you Toe is perfectly straight, that will chew through tires quick.

Even though I am stock height and wheels, I'm looking into getting a camber kit to adjust the camber past spec to make them even closer to 0.0 Stock components can only adjust so far.

 

Round ones work nicely. Rubber too.

 

I tried wood tires once and it didn't turn out so well. I also saw myth-busters do square wheels once and that didn't turn out so well either.

So yeah round rubber tires for sure.

 

What about triangles, or is that just absurd?

 

looking more closely, the inner driver's side has a some more tread, and unevenly so. the inner passenger side is just straight up bald. interesting.

so, I'm shopping 2x hankook ventus S1 245/45r18 and 2x 225/45r18 and getting an alignment to factory standard.

 

OP: You joined this website in August 2013 and haven't figured out how the different forums work yet?

 

I had the same thing on some old Hankook tires on my 91 3000GT. Previous owner had lowered the car without an alignment. The camber was really negative, but more importantly, the toe was misaligned. It rendered the tires useless even though the rest of the tread was fine. Just get an alignment to factory specs (provided you have stock suspension set-up this should be attainable with factory equipment) and you should be fine!

Chris

 

I joined, posted a few pictures in the new Z subforum and daily drove the car afterward without browsing the forum much at all. Today, after pricing tires I reached out after looking at the first page of the 03-09 Z subforum for a sticky thread about tires. Not seeing such a thread, i created this one.

A quick google search for a thread (admittedly after starting this thread) revealed a thread specifically about tires but that thread died in 2009, otherwise I'd have gotten a mod involved to close the one I started

 

short answer is no, i just hand jammed this thread into a forum i thought fit best, so close if I'm wrong, mods ;-(

 

Thread moved to Wheels & Tires

 

Most likely out of whack, happens all the time.

Btw, we are talking about the rear tires right ?

 

They weren't too badly out of whack, but yeah I replaced all 4. The right side needed camber correction, which makes sense because of how badly they were worn. Kept the front 2. I went with 4x Bridgestone 970AS.

edit: when I say kept the front 2, I have them in a friend's garage for when I do some autoX this summer. Need to go get 2 more for that purpose. Shouldn't matter if they're not hankook ventus V4 though, should it? I didn't see any for sale when I was shopping tires a couple days ago.

 

attached some pics of the previous set