You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our community, at no cost, you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is free, fast and simple, so please join our community today!
Ok so I have a 2008 GT with the BF Goodrich g-Force 235/50-18. I bought the car in September of 2008 NEW and it currently has ~18500 miles on it.
First let me say I rotate my tires every ~6000 miles. I was getting ready to do the 3rd rotation and I notice the tread is almost gone. I get out my tread gauge and sure enough they are right on the boarder line of needing replaced.
Anyone ever warranty their tires? PITA?
This ad is not displayed to registered or logged-in members. Register your free account today and become a member on Mustang Forums!
Ok so I have a 2008 GT with the BF Goodrich g-Force 235/50-18. I bought the car in September of 2008 NEW and it currently has ~18500 miles on it.
First let me say I rotate my tires every ~6000 miles. I was getting ready to do the 3rd rotation and I notice the tread is almost gone. I get out my tread gauge and sure enough they are right on the boarder line of needing replaced.
Anyone ever warranty their tires? PITA?
Original equipment tires don't have mileage warranties from any tire company. High performance tires, (like what you have), also don't have mileage warranties, either as O.E. tires or replacements. For a high performance tire, you wouldn't want it to last a long time because if it did, then it wouldn't be gripping the road very well as the rubber compound would be harder. High performance tires have soft rubber compounds to grip the road and provide maximum handling traction. They aren't supposed to provide long tread life. To get almost 20,000 miles out of a high end, Z rated high performance tire is pretty good tread life. I had a set of B.F.Goodrich VR rated Comp T/A's on my car that lasted me 12,000 miles and these tires handled so well, they put a big grin on my face every day! When they wore out, I bought more of them to keep that big grin going.
As a tip, I would suggest having a four wheel/thrust angle alignment done on your car when you have new tires installed, because it is typical for new cars to be out of align. The car may track straight, but most of the time they are out of align and wear out tires prematurely because of it.
My observation is these are certainly not "soft" tires and they do not grip worth a damn. They are 400 rated tires and should see at least (at very least) should last 30K miles. But i guess this is neither here nor there because they are gone.
Can tell you my FM901s lasted 12k miles with a lot of track time... those where sticky tires and hooked like mad. And they were only 200 rated tires.
I guess it is just another way for the MFG to go cheap.
There should be a pamphelt regarding the tire warranty in your glovebox that was provided with the Owners Manual when you bought the car. It should spell out what your rights are with respect to premature wear.
You got 18k out of your tires and you are complaining? Bro, you have to replace all 4 tires per year on a Mustang and do the alignment each time. I try and tell every person who buys a Stang this, they typically don't believe me until a year later. Screw rotating your tires. You should be burning up the rears much faster. So once the rears go buy new tires put the fronts on the rear and the new ones on the front.... You don't own a Civic or Accord...
As for tire warranties, just ignore them completely. You can get the OEM tires for 80 bucks a piece off tire rack during the winter. Buy a truck load, burn em up and enjoy your car.
**PS, a lot of shops give you a 6 month warranty on the alignment, So go back a week before it expires...**
Last edited by Fort LiquordaleGT; 11-05-2009 at 09:47 AM.
Having the tread almost gone by 18500 miles sounds unusually fast. I got almost that many miles out of a set of 140 treadwear tires, and I don't go easy on my tires.
Can you describe the wear in a little more detail?
And describe your driving.
Just my data point, but at 13500 miles, I'd worn a maximum of 0.07" off any tire, with no more than 0.02" variation across any one tire's tread. One rotation about midway through that distance. Original tread depth I took as being the advertised 9/32" or 0.28". No burnouts or drag racing, but I'll accelerat briskly, am not afraid to brake heavily, and corner hard any chance I get.
I'm expecting over 40,000 miles out of them, not that I really want to be putting up with them that long.
Thanks for the information. My observation is these are certainly not "soft" tires and they do not grip worth a damn. They are 400 rated tires and should see at least (at very least) should last 30K miles. But i guess this is neither here nor there because they are gone. Can tell you my FM901s lasted 12k miles with a lot of track time... those where sticky tires and hooked like mad. And they were only 200 rated tires. I guess it is just another way for the MFG to go cheap.
They aren't going cheap at all. ZR rated tires are considered very high end, soft compound tires and that is what you have on your car. 30,000 miles out of a set of ZR rated tires would be a fantastic and require driving the car like a little old lady.
Tread wear ratings are to be used to compare the tread life of another tire within the same brand and not brand to brand. For example; brand X has a tire that is a very inexpensive, short tread life tire, but they have another tire that lasts 6 times longer, so its tread wear rating will be 600. Now brand Z has their lowest rated tire that wears much better than brand X's lowest rated tire, so any other tire brand Z has in their lineup wont wear as many times more than their lowest wearing tire, so their best rated tread wear tire may only be 300.
Again, I'd suspect some alignment wear issues on your tires. Take your tread depth gauge and on the same tire, measure the tread depth of the outside shoulder vs the inside shoulder and I'd be willing to bet you'll find it's uneven. Also, (check to be certain there are not steel belts showing before you do this), but rub your hand back and forth across the tread of the tire, (as the tire is mounted on the car, from left to right, front to back), and see if the tire tread feels smooth one direction, but uneven and digging into your hand the other direction. If so this is cupping/feathering wear and this is generally caused by an out of align condition, specifically a toe adjustment that is out of specification. Another tip to extending tire life is to make sure the tires are inflated to the proper air pressures. Look on the end of your doors where it latches to the body for the tire placard sticker and this will tell you what the engineers recommend for inflation pressures in your tires.
I hope this has been of help.
Last edited by RogerDodger1; 11-05-2009 at 03:17 PM.
Roger - From my point of view, a 400 treadwear tire is not a particularly soft tire at all, regardless of its speed rating. Perhaps with respect to a 50,000+ mile guarantee tire it is, but for tires of interest to the performance driving world it's a pretty hard compound. Soft is streetable autocross tires like Falken Azenis and DOT-legal tires such as R-comps and drag radials.
I realise that treadwear numbers are not fully comparable across mfr lines, but the fact that there's a procedure involved that is used to extrapolate a TW number from means that there aren't likely to be too many cases of unreasonable discrepancy between tires of nominally the same TW. Yes, from my own experience I can think of a couple of outliers - Bridgestone's V-rated RE92 at 160TW that went past 35,000 miles and still wasn't into the wear bars vs the replacement Falken ZE512 at 360TW that barely made 38,000 and was, and Falken Azenis at 200TW that wouldn't have lasted 10,000 miles even if I didn't autocross them.
This forum is owned and operated by Internet Brands, Inc., a Delaware corporation. It is not authorized or endorsed by the Ford Motor Company and is not affiliated with the Ford Motor Company or its related companies in any way. Ford® is a registered trademark of the Ford Motor Company
Tire Warranty on the BF Goodrich g-Force Tires...
