# Tire Wear



## brian v (Dec 25, 2011)

Just because you think that IT is a new cruzen May not necessarilly mean the alignment is not true .. these vehichles come from the factory with defects .. also there are so many things on the roads these days that can and do affect the alignment of a new vehichle .

How are your shocks responding to your touring through Pittsburgh ?
Wheel Air Pressure has an affect also .


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

That is a possibility. Our roads here in Pittsburgh are pretty crappy from the winters, but the car seems to respond normal. It tracks straight and is will controlled after bumps. My dad who is a GM tech keeps telling me that I'm spinning the tires since its a manual transmission, which I don't know what to think about. FYI I run the tires at about 38 psi (door jam recommends 36)


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

The Cruze is heavy so lots of slow speed twisty driving will eat tires. Check your alignment anyway as this should be done every time you replace tires just to ensure there's no alignment issues.


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## 170-3tree (Nov 4, 2014)

If your driving fairly aggressive, especially up hills, it'd definitely a possibility that your spinning even if it doesn't feel like it, you could be spinning 1.7 or 2.5 times the speed of the vehicle and burning up rubber without realizing it. If it were an alignment problem, you'd see some aggressive wear patterns as well. 

I'm calling roads and driving style.


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

Sounds like I will definitely have to get the alignment checked then. Around here tires on some cars do tend to get eaten quickly. Our Town and Country goes through tires ever 15k or so, while our Malibu went 30K on the stock tires. For those that replied do you guys notice your front tires wearing significantly more than the rears?


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## Vetterin (Mar 27, 2011)

jmlo96 said:


> My dad who is a GM tech keeps telling me that I'm spinning the tires since its a manual transmission, which I don't know what to think about.


Shirley you jest!!!!


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

I'm a fairly aggressive driver but I have never worn out tires that fast. Are they wearing evenly or around the edges?


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## blk88verde (Apr 30, 2011)

When I had a 2002 Mercedes C230K, the Michelin Pilot Sports would be done in 13k miles. Shortest tire life I have experienced.


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## jsusanka (Jan 31, 2011)

that is way too short mileage no matter what the roads are like. how does it drive? does your steering wheel vibrate? check the balancing and alignment. I am at 42,000 miles on my original firestones and they still have some life left in them.


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

It drives just like every other Cruze I've driven, I've had it up to fairly high speeds and it doesn't shake or anything. As for the wear pattern it looks perfectly even, except just wearing quickly in the front. Part of me just has to wonder if getting the 4 Coopers for 300 dollars was too cheap, and you get what you pay for is living up to itself. I didn't expect much from the stock tires because they always seem to be junk no matter what manufacturer.


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## brian v (Dec 25, 2011)

We would like for you to take a few pics of these tyres and post them up so we may get a look at what you are writing about .. 

There seems to be some sort of discrepency with how you are able to determine that your wear standards are so substantially reduced with 
New tyres than the rest of the worlds .


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

Thought 38K miles on my Cruze new tires was bad, could have pushed them another 10-20K, but funny about stuff like this. Very little friction between that very small portion of rubber meets the road and can make the difference between life and death, prefer life over death.

Thought it was alignment, only adjustment is toe in, rest has to be replaced, but alignment checked out okay. Due get better tire mileage with double wishbone suspension, tires always remain vehicle, but with the Cruze with a single control arm and struts, camber is constantly changing every time you hit a bump. Also was using 35 psi during the summer and noticed more inside wear, just cut that back to the recommended 30 psi, not only easier on my back, but not seeing any difference in fuel economy. What varies the most with fuel economy is which gas station I choose, no longer have standards. 

Speaking about roads, in the 50's, Eisenhower increased gas tax from 2 cents to a nickel a gallon to build 46,00 miles of new interstates. Today, paying over a half a buck a gallon and can't even repair pot holes with this. 

In the last ten years we got three new class B interstates, lowest bidder got the jobs. Major sections are already falling apart again and have to be resurfaced, but state claims they don't have the money because not getting gas tax from one Volt we have in this state. No mention of the zillion SUV's or pickup trucks. 

Wear also increases exponentially with speed, could slow down and just about everybody flies up to a stop sign and slams on their brakes. Then guns it when taking off only to hit another red light. Now reports are coming out that one ton of salt can cost as much as 3,800 bucks for road repairs, but studded snow tires took the blame for this. ABS is worthless on glare ice. So you wonder why we have problems?


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

Well when I was changing my oil today, I decided to rotate the tires. I have to say I'm very convinced I just have a bad set of tires. Apparently the backs aren't far behind the fronts now at 8/32s. Go figure, they are wearing evenly just quickly. I attached a picture of what the fronts look like. They are wearing perfectly even according to the tread depth gauge I have.


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## brian v (Dec 25, 2011)

Ah good for 50.000 more miles .


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## mayo302 (Jan 24, 2011)

jsusanka said:


> that is way too short mileage no matter what the roads are like. how does it drive? does your steering wheel vibrate? check the balancing and alignment. I am at 42,000 miles on my original firestones and they still have some life left in them.


Agreed!!
Wife's car (2011 LT) has 111k on the factory tires. Finally worn down enough to require replacement now so I'm going to try to find the same ones to replace with. Rotated a couple of times in that period, inflated 40-45psi always.
OP: If you're going through tires faster than 40k miles you either have:
soft racing tires
too many burnouts/donuts
underinflated tires (they get hot with less pressure)


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

mayo302 said:


> Agreed!!
> Wife's car (2011 LT) has 111k on the factory tires. Finally worn down enough to require replacement now so I'm going to try to find the same ones to replace with. Rotated a couple of times in that period, inflated 40-45psi always.
> OP: If you're going through tires faster than 40k miles you either have:
> soft racing tires
> ...


City driving will also wear tires as turning causes more wear than going straight. I got about 40k miles out of my Eco tires before I decided they were unsafe to use in the heavy rain we get here.


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

You hit the nail on the head. Even the interstates where I like have bends in them, and I mostly do drive city. The fact that some of you got that kind of mileage from the stock Firestones shocks me. I got rid of them because I was tired of the car sliding and almost getting stuck on the hills in the rain. When I worked at the Honda dealer the only worse tires I found then the FR710s were the Affinity Touring tires that they put on the base model Honda Civics. Those were absolutely horrible even in the dry.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

jmlo96 said:


> You hit the nail on the head. Even the interstates where I like have bends in them, and I mostly do drive city. The fact that some of you got that kind of mileage from the stock Firestones shocks me. I got rid of them because I was tired of the car sliding and almost getting stuck on the hills in the rain. When I worked at the Honda dealer the only worse tires I found then the FR710s were the Affinity Touring tires that they put on the base model Honda Civics. Those were absolutely horrible even in the dry.


It truly concerns me how long some people pushchair tires. My tires had 5/32" of tread when I got rid of them, and a in it was due to compromised wet traction. Stopping distance increases by a solid 50% going from new to 4/32" or tread, and the legal limit is 2/32". In a region that gets any amount of precipitation, that's just a collision waiting to happen..


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

I completely agree. When I had my Cherokee that I bought off my dad, he had these cheap Goodyear tires on it. One day in the rain it just slid off the road with no warning and I almost went over the hill into the creek. That was a real wake up call for tire safety for me.


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## mayo302 (Jan 24, 2011)

I'm surprised that the experience with the factory firestones differs that much. We've had ok performance in the snow with them (not the best but not as bad as my Mustang, lol) but haven't had any issues with rain/puddle/hydroplaning/stopping and just hit the 2/32 wear indicators this month.
I've had other tires that did way worse with more tread.


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

All I can say is when we were paying nickel a gallon gas tax, we had far better roads than what we have today paying over a half a buck just for gas tax. Now reports as costing as much as 3,800 bucks to repair roads per ton of road salt used.

Son had a bad experience sending his wife to his Walmart store yesterday, slow leak in a 250 buck SUV tire. Procedure is to remove all the air, soap the bead joints, break both sides of the tire beads, soap the beads again, squeeze one side of the tire, push that in, then install that bar before inserting it into that powered rotating device.

Don't know what step that kid skipped, but when he inserted that bar, tore off a hunk of the bead rubber off and insisted the tire was this way. A very angry son called and got Walmart to buy a new tire, but will be done by his dealer. But this is not the end of this problems, depending on wear of that tire with ABS and traction control, may have to replace the other good tire at the same time, and forget about rotating.

What I do know about the Cruze is that the proportioning valves have been replaced by pulsing the two rear valves in the ABS. What I don't know and haven't been able to find out is if your ABS light comes on, does this kill that proportioning valve function, so when you hit the brakes in an emergency you will also spin out?

Suppose I could disconnect one front wheel sensor and find out unless we have other volunteers to try this. Do know if one of four half worn tires gets severe road damage, have to replace all four. Sure our congress knows this as well making ABS and traction control the law. They also know we cannot go to school or work without a vehicle, but won't let use deduct that cost against what little paychecks we make, but sure give big breaks to billionaires.

So why do we put up with the BS?


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

Since my son married into a Ford family, the issue of tire wear with Focus's and Fusion's came up.

Their reasoning is because the cars are being made much lighter, they have to use a softer rubber in the tires to get more traction. And that is their reason for short tire life.

His in-laws had to buy new tires in the 20K mile range. 

Ha, nothing about they are also putting cheap tires on these things.


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## Jfisher (Apr 21, 2013)

XtremeRevolution said:


> City driving will also wear tires as turning causes more wear than going straight. I got about 40k miles out of my Eco tires before I decided they were unsafe to use in the heavy rain we get here.


I do mostly city driving in my Eco and I'm at 47k miles. I do my own rotations and have since I bought the car new. I'm expecting at least another 20k miles out of these tires. The lighter weight of the Eco definitely helps the tire life. That or these are awesome tires.


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

Jfisher said:


> I do mostly city driving in my Eco and I'm at 47k miles. I do my own rotations and have since I bought the car new. I'm expecting at least another 20k miles out of these tires. The lighter weight of the Eco definitely helps the tire life. That or these are awesome tires.


90 lbs doesn't make a difference in tire life. Those tires are made from an extremely hard rubber compound for less rolling resistance. 

Unfortunately, they also compromise traction and noise levels compared to other tires out there.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Jfisher said:


> I do mostly city driving in my Eco and I'm at 47k miles. I do my own rotations and have since I bought the car new. I'm expecting at least another 20k miles out of these tires. The lighter weight of the Eco definitely helps the tire life. That or these are awesome tires.


The GoodYear FuelMax tires are actually a very good tire. They aren't as good in the snow and ice as some other tires but if you drive predominately on dry pavement they're hard to beat as an all around package for the average driver.


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## Robby (Mar 1, 2013)

Tire wear, same car, same pressures, properly aligned etcetera varies wildly from state to state.
Every state has its own aggregate compound for road construction, generally revolving around common weather conditions.

I,ve noted the south and southwest U.S seem to have some rather coarse compounds…..I'll guess this helps water runoff.
In the snow belt, it seems a finer pour is used…..I'll guess to keep water from freezing in the crevices causing the material to pop when the water freezes.

Guesses aside, the rougher compounds rally tear up motorcycle tires and I have to assume the same holds true for cars and trucks.

Rob


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## Cass23VSU4 (Mar 13, 2014)

The Cruze has a 60/40 balance and even more so with the diesel variant. My door sticker said to inflate to 38psi cold for the GY Fuel Max 94V load GM Spec tire. In reality, traction and stability are primary so I have Vogue Signature V 215/55/17 98VXL load running at 42psi cold.

In short, try increasing your tire pressure from 38 psi to 40 psi and get an alignment and make sure they give you a printout of the before and after specs. If need be try to find a performance shop that does alignments, they should be able to get you dialed in correctly.


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

Updating this thread from the dead, lol. So back in December I had my alignment checked, and we found it to be perfect. I have learned that the stock Firestones only come with 9/32nds of tread. Now that I have been driving a stick for longer, I for sure think those wearing was my fault. As for the Cooper's, who knows. Must have just been soft rubber.


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## jmlo96 (May 2, 2015)

I'm going to update this thread after a few years. About 2 months ago I had a technician at work align my car because the alignment after changing my struts didn't get my steering wheel straight.

When you align the Cruze with a Hunter alignment machine, it lists 2 alignment specifications. One of them is "sport suspension" and the other is the regular suspension. The entire time I've owned the car and had the alignment checked, it was for the sport suspension. Apparently the RS package does not mean sport suspension. 

The tech aligned the car with the regular suspension specifications. Here are some things I have noticed:

1- The car rolls better down the road. I especially noticed a difference going down a hill I frequently drive on. It used to feel like something was holding the car back. It's like the wheels are finally pointing straight.
2- My tires are wearing significantly better. Before the tires would wear evenly from sidewall to sidewall, but the tread would look torn up and get this odd saw tooth wear to them. One of the mechanics described it as a mild "cupping".

Anyway, I figured I'd pass this on in case anyone else was having a similar problem with tire wear. It's a shame the dealer did not figure this out to begin with, as I've gone through a ridiculous amount of tires in 40k miles. I suspect the alignment was off from the factory and didn't get corrected until now.


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