Michelin PS4's wearing out really fast?
 

I was going over my car the other day since I hadn't driven it much this month and noticed the PS4's mounted on the car when I bought it are only about a 1mm above the wear bars. This surprised me since I've only owned the car for a year and driven about 9800 miles.

I fully understand/expect summer tires wear out faster than all seasons, but this is half the life I've seen from a set of PSS's on a GTI or a set of PS4S's on a RWD BMW 435. Both of those cars were autocrossed as well, just like my BRZ, but the tires seemed to wear much slower.

Wear is even across the entire tread area and there are no indications of feathering/cupping/etc that would indicate an alignment issue or something else which would cause pre-mature wear. They just seem to be wearing out far faster than what I've experienced with other Michielin summer tires.

Anyone else who's car came equipped with these tires have the same experience?

What's your front and rear toe?

Right now I'm running the factory alignment as the car was delivered about a year ago. I was holding off on doing an alignment on the car until I get my dedicated wheel/tire set for autocross this spring, so I haven't had it up on a machine yet.

If toe is way off would there be any visible signs? I'm not seeing anything abnormal when looking at the tire. My last car had an issue with toe up front and I'd see feathering on the outside tread blocks. That's not the case in this instance.

I'm assuming your alignment was off. Every new car I purchased I've always got an alignment done almost right away (usually within the break-in period).

Edit: For what it's worth, the last 2 new cars I purchased I was able to get the alignment covered by the dealer.

This. Very often factory alignment in completely new car might be really off. And passing values of still within OE acceptable range extremes make handling VERY different, potentially with handling artifacts. Do proper alignment at very least once.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I would never have considered alignment since I wasn't seeing the tell-tail signs of tire wear I'm used to seeing with a bad alignment.

When you get it checked, you should tell them the specs that you want rather than just letting them get it "within spec". The spec is a very broad range. For max tire life you'll want close to zero toe, front and rear. That's what I run, 0.0 front and rear, for road and track.

I refuse to take my car to any shop that is unwilling to set the toe to exactly what I want. It isn't something hard to do for the shops that knows and cares about their work.

how many autox runs on the tires?

PS4's are 20K mile tires. So they are 1/2 life now

He’s 1mm from the treadwear indicators, so they’re pretty much done as far as being ok to drive in the rain.

I had 44 runs this season with this car, so not that many really.

I had double the number of runs AND road mileage out of sets of PSSs and PS4Ss on other vehicles. I figured the PS4s would last similar, if not longer, since they didn't seem to be as soft as the "top shelf" Michelin summer tires.


That's actually better than what I was expecting consider my usage. I would have been happy with 20K which is about what I normally get from a set of summers.

Yep. That's what got me concerned when I checked them out. I'll have new shoes on the car in a week or two.

Since we're having another abnormally warm winter in this area, I wasn't in much of a rush. Now it's wear rather than weather that's driving events.

I have owned 2 brand new cars, one a custom order, and one right off the showroom floor, as well as one bought with very low mileage/as new. All of them were off a considerable margin.

Also, as I work on countless cars and do lots of alignments I see tons of nearly new ones that also need alignments.

Many shops will say "its good" if its just all "in the green" or just out of the green a bit. This might have been good with domestic front ends from decades ago, but on a quality modern performance suspension, this is absolutely not good.

In other words, take it to a GOOD alignment shop, one with a tech who not only will do more than just "put it in the green" but actually understands what they are doing and WHY they are doing it.

put some camber bolts in the front and go get it done

And if the tech doesn't correctly set all your tire pressures, and make sure nothing is worn out before they start, they aren't the right one

Also, if your tires are worn unevenly, the alignment might not be able to make them wear evenly again, but the next set will wear more evenly

I just replaced my PS4 tires with the All Season version after only 4,000 miles. It was seasonal driving conditions that prompted the change. I estimate about 8/32" on the front and 7/32" on the rear of tread depth. My tires were wearing evenly with no signs of misalignment. The summer tires handle nicely, but they certainly would not last long.