350Z tire wear

Can anybody give positive or negative info about their experience with the reported front tire wear problem?

I'm very interested in getting a 350Z Touring with th 18" wheels, but the tire wear issue is making me rethink this.

Most of the reports were with early production (myself included) where it seems the toe was incorrect causing the wear, but apparently since around 3/04 that was fixed, mine was aligned and tires replaced around 5K miles currenlty have 14K and it has not come back.

Can anybody give positive or negative info about their experience with the reported front tire wear problem?

I'm very interested in getting a 350Z Touring with th 18" wheels, but the tire wear issue is making me rethink this.


the front tire problem is most likely caused by people driving the cars very fast and as most amateurs do they load the front tires too much

the only other three causes would be: too stiff front suspension again putting load in the front tires (fixed by getting some new suspension with less rebound up front) or bad tires(easy fix), bad alignement

Most of the reports were with early production (myself included) where it seems the toe was incorrect causing the wear, but apparently since around 3/04 that was fixed, mine was aligned and tires replaced around 5K miles currenlty have 14K and it has not come back.

Thanks westpak. That answers my question. I found an article at autoweek.com that seemed to say the same thing.

I'm still interested in more first hand accounts if anybody has them.

Info from people working for nissan would be good also.

the front tire problem is most likely caused by people driving the cars very fast and as most amateurs do they load the front tires too much

the only other three causes would be: too stiff front suspension again putting load in the front tires (fixed by getting some new suspension with less rebound up front) or bad tires(easy fix), bad alignement

Huh??? Do you have any clue what roekl is asking?

Huh??? Do you have any clue what roekl is asking?


yes and i just posted posible reasons for premature front tire wear


show me were i was wrong from a technical point of view

yes and i just posted posible reasons for premature front tire wear


show me were i was wrong from a technical point of view


Yes all your points are valid but he is asking about the specific tire wear problem reported on the 350Z's not asking why tires might wear.

I experienced the tire wear problem you mentioned. It has been resolved with front end alignment changes. The problem manifested as "scalloping" of the front tires and excessive road noise, especially when braking to a stop. The dealership reset the alignment and rotated the front tires (better them than me). They asked me to drive it for a couple of thousand miles and see if the tire rotation would cause the tires to wear more evenly. This did not help, so they replaced the front tires under warranty at about 18,000 miles. I now have just over 25,000 miles on the car (+-7500) on the new tires and to date the problem has not reoccurred. I originally began to notice the excess tire noise at about 5-6000 miles.

the tire wear was caused by a wrong setting-the fronts were aligned to 1 degree toe out making the car darty in conering and tearing up the insides of the front tires.

neutrino-i dont understand why you think the z has bad dampeaing settings because my z pulled 1.0g of grip before i even changed the coilovers and everyone knows that is an amazing thing for any car to acomplish.

anyhow this problem was only on the frist 10,000 z's sent to the US and then was quickly fixed.

Thanks westpak. That answers my question. I found an article at autoweek.com that seemed to say the same thing.

I'm still interested in more first hand accounts if anybody has them.

Info from people working for nissan would be good also.

I just had my second set of replacement tires installed. Orginal tires were replaced at 13,000 miles. I just had a new set of front tires installed at 28,000 miles. Nissan has paid for both sets. I had the front end aligned 3 times since I've had the car (20 months). Hope the new service bulletin will fix the problem. If not I'll be trading before this set of tires goes bad.