Wow. Your lucky you caught that when you did. Thankfully it looks like you were only into the polyamide cords and there wasn't any of the metal belts showing through yet. Once you start cutting into the steel belts then your basically riding on a time bomb ready to go off.


That wear being so far on the inside edge is most likely due to excessive toe out (negative toe). These cars should have slight positive toe and it doesn't take much negative toe to cause wear like that. That tire also shows some feathering, which is another sign that the tire was toed out. If the wear was due to excessive negative camber then it would be more evenly dispersed across the surface of the tire, not just isolated to the far inside edge.


I'm assuming the -1.9 and -1.1 that you listed above are your front camber figures, but if those are your front toe figures then something is really wrong there.

 

Yes, and -1.1 was the tire that got destroyed. At the time it was aligned, toe was at 0.01*.

And yeah, I consider myself lucky.

 

Interested to see what your current alignment specs are. I go full lock when I park every now & then just so I can see how my front treadblocks are wearing. Luckily they've been good the entire time my Gs been lowered, but it's something that is good to keep tabs on for sure.

 

Damn. That's a great idea. Never occurred to me before.

 

Good call! I do the same... and check my tires every time I park at the curb in front of my house (since its on a slight hill and I turn the the tires towards the curb out of habit).

 

How long ago was it aligned? I have a lifetime alignment with Firestone and get mine checked about every 6 months.


.01° of positive toe seems good. However, seeing how worn that tire is, I think you'll probably see different results when you have your alignment checked tomorrow.


FYI... Alt+0176 (on the number pad) gives you that little degree symbol.

 

Two years and 12k miles ago.

Got moved to Monday. And yeah, based on these comments and realizing it was actually the lesser camber of the two... I'm expecting toe to be whacked.

Showoff

 

Or you can google degree symbol and copy/paste 😁

 

° option shift 8 on a mac if anyone is curious lol.

 

I do the same. Driving lowered European cars for 15+ years taught me that. I drive a lot too. 15=K/year is on the low end for me

 

Based on the state of that summer tire, I got the car aligned today. Or rather, I should say I confirmed alignment today. Turns out the car is exactly where I want it to be, barely changed from the last alignment, which was 12000 miles and two years ago. Go figure.

Looking at this morning with optimism, I'm happy to see these numbers. And it was worth the $97 to get them, even though no actual adjustments were made. The money is owed because technician time was spent in the shop, and the machine was in use, getting the car set up. The technician was their senior most tech, who I always insist on using (great guy). The machine itself is new, and was just calibrated last month. So I've no problem with paying for the work. However, it doesn't explain why that one front tire's inner edge went so bad on me.

Seems that the wear on that inner edge was just about to go dangerously bad when I assessed things in the Spring, and I made a bad choice in squeezing one more season out of it. And shame on me for not keeping an eye on things. Also, I'm forced to conclude that negative camber can really accelerate a wear pattern like this. So... lessons learned, I suppose.

 

Interesting that it was the left front which wasn't far off camber spec. High speed cornering would tend to affect the outer edge more so that one tire wearing that way seems a mystery.

What was the condition of the right front tire?

 

How many miles were on those tires?

 

My best estimate is 12,000 to 15,000 miles. Hard to tell exactly because I only use them in the summer. Maybe the low end of what you could expect from a tire like the Pilot Super Sport, anyway. I've been googling images of inner edge tire wear. There are some really scary pics out there, much much worse than what I had.

I'm genuinely content with these alignment numbers. Just enough tuck to give me a flush line down the fender, without being obvious, or killing tires... overall, LOL. Obviously this tire bit the dust.

Here are a few lessons learned:

• Crank the front wheels now and then, to keep current with assessing the tire wear.
• If you're on the fence about whether edge-wear is too much to keep the tire... get new tires.
• And finally, neg camber wears the inner edge, it just does. No amount of wishful thinking disputes that as a simple fact.

 

Oh I'm sure there are worse examples, but it does seem on the super low end of how many miles to expect even with some decent camber. Glad you figured it out before something bad happened!