Tire shop advice...

[toymdngn]

So a couple months ago I bought some brand new tires for my 2004 Mazda6 at the local Les Schwab and had them mount and balance them. We had put somewhere between 25k and 30k on the old tires and the insides were pretty worn out. The guy that looked at the tires said that Mazdas run a pretty aggressive alignment setting from the factory and that it's normal to see more wear on the insides. Well, we've now put ~2k miles on our BRAND NEW all weather tires and the fronts are almost completely worn out. We took the car back to Les Schwab and it turns out that the alignment was way out of whack. They told us that we need to buy 2 new tires (at $130/tire) and only offered us a 10% discount.

The way I see it, they should have suggested having an alignment done when they saw the old tires before installing new tires, instead of just saying "mazdas run an aggressive alignment" and us coming back 2k miles later with bald tires. These tires are a 30k tire with a warranty, so shouldn't they just warranty them out? It seems to me that they just NEGLECTED to tell us that the car needed the front end checked out, and since it is their job to keep an eye out for that stuff, they should just replace the tires at little or no charge to me, especially since I just spent $650 with them.

What are your guys' thoughts?

P.S. The car is actually going back to the tire shop tomorrow for a bushing replacement and my wife will be talking to them about tire replacement then.

 

[opelgt1969]

So a couple months ago I bought some brand new tires for my 2004 Mazda6 at the local Les Schwab and had them mount and balance them. We had put somewhere between 25k and 30k on the old tires and the insides were pretty worn out. The guy that looked at the tires said that Mazdas run a pretty aggressive alignment setting from the factory and that it's normal to see more wear on the insides. Well, we've now put ~2k miles on our BRAND NEW all weather tires and the fronts are almost completely worn out. We took the car back to Les Schwab and it turns out that the alignment was way out of whack. They told us that we need to buy 2 new tires (at $130/tire) and only offered us a 10% discount.

The way I see it, they should have suggested having an alignment done when they saw the old tires before installing new tires, instead of just saying "mazdas run an aggressive alignment" and us coming back 2k miles later with bald tires. These tires are a 30k tire with a warranty, so shouldn't they just warranty them out? It seems to me that they just NEGLECTED to tell us that the car needed the front end checked out, and since it is their job to keep an eye out for that stuff, they should just replace the tires at little or no charge to me, especially since I just spent $650 with them.

What are your guys' thoughts?

P.S. The car is actually going back to the tire shop tomorrow for a bushing replacement and my wife will be talking to them about tire replacement then.

To be a little harsh here I think it's your job to keep an eye out for stuff thats wrong with your car, it belongs to you not them. Also whats your driving style if your hard in corners you will wear out the tires no matter what the alignment is.

 

[toymdngn]

To be a little harsh here I think it's your job to keep an eye out for stuff thats wrong with your car, it belongs to you not them. Also whats your driving style if your hard in corners you will wear out the tires no matter what the alignment is.

The car is daily driven around town with 2 little kids in it, it's not like I race it. Besides, my wife drives the car 95% of the time. And yeah, I do keep an eye on things, but I don't have an alignment machine at home and I can't get under the car every single day to make sure it's ok. They are a tire/suspension/alignment shop and should know to keep an eye out for this type of thing when a customer brings a car in.

 

[Slash]

Wear like that is caused from over inflation, not alignment.

 

[toymdngn]

Wear like that is caused from over inflation, not alignment.

Over-inflation causes the center to wear more, not the inside edge. Also, if you look, the inside edge has kind of a choppy look to it, hard to tell from the pictures. Besides, the tire shop filled them to 36 PSI and that is EXACTLY what they've been kept at for the 2 months that the tires have been on the car. If it was over-inflation, don't you think the rear (which the alignment was perfect back there) would be wearing the same? Nope. The front end toe setting was at -0.85 degrees on both sides, which is what caused the wear. It's now at a much more appropriate +0.09 degrees on each side. Still, you'd think that guys that are trained to look out for this kind of stuff would say something... I guess I just have better morals when it comes to owner costs/safety.

 

[speed junkie]

Take it as experience for next time you see the very inside of a tire really worn out. It's toe, not camber. This is a big misconception with people who don't really know much outside of factory alignments. They see this type of wear on tires and are convinced it is because of camber. Or they see a car with negative camber and then try convincing the owner that they'll get the type of uneven wear you see here.

When the technician told you that these cars came with "aggressive" alignment from the factory he was referring to the camber and wrongly convinced you of believing that they were severely worn because of it when they were actually unevenly worn because of the toe being off.

I think your best bet is to explain to them how a misled technician wrongly convinced you into not realigning the front which led you to prematurely wear out your new tires. They probably wont give you much better of a discount though. Either way I'd take my business elsewhere.

 

[toymdngn]

Take it as experience for next time you see the very inside of a tire really worn out. It's toe, not camber. This is a big misconception with people who don't really know much outside of factory alignments. They see this type of wear on tires and are convinced it is because of camber. Or they see a car with negative camber and then try convincing the owner that they'll get the type of uneven wear you see here.

When the technician told you that these cars came with "aggressive" alignment from the factory he was referring to the camber and wrongly convinced you of believing that they were severely worn because of it when they were actually unevenly worn because of the toe being off.

I think your best bet is to explain to them how a misled technician wrongly convinced you into not realigning the front which led you to prematurely wear out your new tires. They probably wont give you much better of a discount though. Either way I'd take my business elsewhere.

Yeah, I figured it was a toe issue but the "tech" that looked at the old tires just chalked it up to the factory setting...

I wish I had a better shop to go to locally, but the Big-O in town has had more than questionable practices for the last 15 years and my only other choice for tires is the local "quality used" place. My normal mechanic recently ordered an alignment machine for his newly opened tire shop and he said that he will be taking care of me in the future. He used to have a good rapport with the local Les Schwab but they had a falling out recently after a lot of bad service from them.

 

[toymdngn]

Update: Lower control arm bushing was bad. Re-alignment is done. I talked to the assistant manager and this is what I said, "Hey man, here's the situation, I was rotating my tires a few months ago and noticed that the inside was getting pretty worn. I brought the car into your shop and was asking if we could dismount the tires and flip them to get a little more life out of them and the tech said that the insides were down to the secondary tread and that the fronts were starting to separate. He told me that this was due to the aggressive alignment setting that Mazda calls for (along with BMW and other high performance cars) and that this type of wear is common on these cars. He said that we needed new tires. We brought the car in a week or two later and had 4 brand new all season tires put on and nobody ever said anything about recommending an alignment. Now I'm about to go on a 1,200 mile trip with my family and 2 of my brand new tires are trashed. I know that you guys aren't completely responsible but was wondering if maybe you could warranty them out or something to help me out. I'm a college student and don't have the spare cash to fork out for 2 new tires when I just paid for 4 of them. What can we do?"

And he basically said that he's going to take care of us and warranty them out under mileage. He doesn't have the tires in stock but another store in our county does and he's sending someone over to get them. It might cost me a small amount but at least I'm not spending another $250 on them...

See, it pays to be a nice guy. I'm sure if I would've called being all irate it would have been a different story.

 

[Pupik]

Wear like that is caused from over inflation, not alignment.

Over-inflation causes excessive center wear (usually 8-10+ psi on a consistent basis). An exception might be for a very powerful car that does burnouts on cheap/low-tech tires. Under-inflation causes inner and outer shoulder wear (at an even rate, and usually running them 5-6 psi low for a few thousand miles can do this).

Side wear on the inner OR outer is typically due to an out-of-specs alignment and/or bad suspension components, but it should be noted that many other things like continued extreme driving, wrong tire sizes, incorrect loading, incorrect speed ratings, and just plain cheap/crap tires can also contribute.

From my experience, there's guys and gals that will suggest tires as a cure-all for every situation, and while they're a rather necessary component, in almost all cases unusual or unpredictable wear patterns are traceable to something other than bad tires. Because there's a chance of a lost sale, some unscrupulous counter folks just move those rings and go on to the next customer, because typically they don't carry suspension components in stock (especially for nearly any import) at the local tire store. On the other hand, there's lots of "repair-deaf" clients who want to solve the visible problems (dirty car, light bulb out, worn tires) rather than shell out for the additional costs of repair, and act as if you said nothing, even when fully documented.

 

[Slash]

Over-inflation causes the center to wear more, not the inside edge. Also, if you look, the inside edge has kind of a choppy look to it, hard to tell from the pictures. Besides, the tire shop filled them to 36 PSI and that is EXACTLY what they've been kept at for the 2 months that the tires have been on the car. If it was over-inflation, don't you think the rear (which the alignment was perfect back there) would be wearing the same? Nope. The front end toe setting was at -0.85 degrees on both sides, which is what caused the wear. It's now at a much more appropriate +0.09 degrees on each side. Still, you'd think that guys that are trained to look out for this kind of stuff would say something... I guess I just have better morals when it comes to owner costs/safety.

Over-inflation causes excessive center wear (usually 8-10+ psi on a consistent basis). An exception might be for a very powerful car that does burnouts on cheap/low-tech tires. Under-inflation causes inner and outer shoulder wear (at an even rate, and usually running them 5-6 psi low for a few thousand miles can do this).

Side wear on the inner OR outer is typically due to an out-of-specs alignment and/or bad suspension components, but it should be noted that many other things like continued extreme driving, wrong tire sizes, incorrect loading, incorrect speed ratings, and just plain cheap/crap tires can also contribute.

From my experience, there's guys and gals that will suggest tires as a cure-all for every situation, and while they're a rather necessary component, in almost all cases unusual or unpredictable wear patterns are traceable to something other than bad tires. Because there's a chance of a lost sale, some unscrupulous counter folks just move those rings and go on to the next customer, because typically they don't carry suspension components in stock (especially for nearly any import) at the local tire store. On the other hand, there's lots of "repair-deaf" clients who want to solve the visible problems (dirty car, light bulb out, worn tires) rather than shell out for the additional costs of repair, and act as if you said nothing, even when fully documented.

Didn't see the outer wear at first, thanks for pointing it out.

 

[Kylehnat]

On the other hand, there's lots of "repair-deaf" clients who want to solve the visible problems (dirty car, light bulb out, worn tires) rather than shell out for the additional costs of repair, and act as if you said nothing, even when fully documented.

I hear this all the time when I'm sitting at dealerships or other service shops. The best was a customer who ignored the advice to replace the timing belt on their crappy minivan (which arrived at the service dept. on the back of a flatbed). Surprise, surprise, the customer was staring a $5000 repair in the face, then decided that the dealership was at fault, and wanted them to comp it. Granted, the layperson shouldn't be expected to know the inner-workings of every component, but a prudent consumer should do some research to see when certain $500 repairs are sound investments...

 

[Danoff]

Update: Lower control arm bushing was bad. Re-alignment is done. I talked to the assistant manager and this is what I said, "Hey man, here's the situation, I was rotating my tires a few months ago and noticed that the inside was getting pretty worn. I brought the car into your shop and was asking if we could dismount the tires and flip them to get a little more life out of them and the tech said that the insides were down to the secondary tread and that the fronts were starting to separate. He told me that this was due to the aggressive alignment setting that Mazda calls for (along with BMW and other high performance cars) and that this type of wear is common on these cars. He said that we needed new tires. We brought the car in a week or two later and had 4 brand new all season tires put on and nobody ever said anything about recommending an alignment. Now I'm about to go on a 1,200 mile trip with my family and 2 of my brand new tires are trashed. I know that you guys aren't completely responsible but was wondering if maybe you could warranty them out or something to help me out. I'm a college student and don't have the spare cash to fork out for 2 new tires when I just paid for 4 of them. What can we do?"

And he basically said that he's going to take care of us and warranty them out under mileage. He doesn't have the tires in stock but another store in our county does and he's sending someone over to get them. It might cost me a small amount but at least I'm not spending another $250 on them...

See, it pays to be a nice guy. I'm sure if I would've called being all irate it would have been a different story.

That's great and everything, but it's a jerk thing to do for the shop to claim that the tires are defective and get the tire company to pay for it. First they tried to get you to foot the bill, now they're going after the tire company.

Checking the alignment and the bushings etc. is not exactly standard procedure for a shop when someone comes in wanting a tire change (I'm not a mechanic, but that seems excessive to me). You'd gotten plenty of mileage out of your previous tires, and it makes perfect sense that they'd wear unevenly based on factory settings. I know that my tires wear unevenly on my car due to factory settings - my mechanic offered me the option to change it to preserve the tires and I turned him down (that's why I bought the car, not because it's friendly to tires but because of the factory handling).

So why would they check your alignment? Why would they assume anything was wrong with your car at all? To be honest, I kinda think this problem is yours to deal with. A diligent mechanic could have checked some of your suspension components, but it's not like that's a requirement unless you specifically asked for and either paid for or got a complementary suspension inspection.

Regardless, I don't think I'd use that tire shop in the future if you can help it. First of all, they're notorious for over charging (tirerack.com is your friend), secondly, they're doing the wrong thing in this case trying to get money back for "defective" tires.

 

[Eric.]

Unless they aligned your car, not their problem.

/thread

 

[toymdngn]

Unless they aligned your car, not their problem.

/thread

They did align my car though. Twice in the last year.

Nice white MKI by the way. I've got an 89na myself.

 

[Danoff]

...the way I read it, the alignment was done after the tires were worn out. Is that not correct?

 

[Joey D]

I get my car aligned quite frequently, you can knock it out of shape pretty quick depending on the roads, so twice last year doesn't mean much. But if your alignment was that out of whack to cause that much wear in a short period of time the car had to have been driving funny.

 

[toymdngn]

...the way I read it, the alignment was done after the tires were worn out. Is that not correct?

It has had 2 alignments in the last year before this situation arose.

Edit: In response to your previous post, I didn't go in to the shop for new tires initially. I went in there to see if we could do some dismounting and rotating to get some more mileage from our old tires and was told that they could do nothing with them because of the excessive wear ON THE INSIDE EDGE ONLY, the other 85% of the tread across the tire still had good tread. That was when the tech said "Mazdas wear like this, you need new tires" instead of "Whoa, that's pretty excessive wear, you might want to have the front end shaken down before spending money on expensive tires". Even when I told the assistant manager about this happening, he agreed with me and said that he will be talking to the employee in question and talking to him about things he knows not about.

Joey- That's the thing, the car felt the same as when we got it with only 16,000 miles on it.

 

[Pupik]

That's great and everything, but it's a jerk thing to do for the shop to claim that the tires are defective and get the tire company to pay for it. First they tried to get you to foot the bill, now they're going after the tire company.

To be fair, we sometimes loosened company policy (at the suggestion of district reps) for certain ranges of tires that:

A) weren't really up to snuff or had issues (and weren't bargain basement-priced)
B) couldn't remotely back up the mileage warranty even if the car hovered in the air
C) chopped and feathered no matter how well-kept and maintained the vehicle was

So you'd kind of have to make "policy adjustments" to a wider range of drivers, within reason.

 

[hawkeye122]

This comes to me as a surprise. I've never had anything but positive interactions with Les Schwab...

 

[Eric.]

Maybe you should consider not doing Mazda's specs on the alignment if they recommend much toe or camber. Do you have a printout of any alignments?

And your mileage warranty probably has nothing to do with treadwear. More like, the tire shouldn't come apart on you. Otherwise I'd probably start choosing autocross tires based on mileage warranty and have more fun being slow.

 

[toymdngn]

The alignment is now on the more conservative end of the ranges. I've got the print out in the car and I'll snap a photo of it when I get around to it. This car is our family car (2004 Mazda 6i) and the wife's daily driver, plus we live in snow country, which is why we got a less performance oriented all weather tire this time around.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Are you sure it's a Mazda6?

No, seriously. We've had two. Both chewed the outsides of the fronts more than anything, both were dead within spec on alignment. Wearing the insides on the front is just wrong for a stock 6. They've all got zero or somewhat positive front camber and toe *should* be zero. Killing the insides before the rest of the tire says you've got toe out and not exactly a small amount of it.

 

[toymdngn]

Are you sure it's a Mazda6?

No, seriously. We've had two. Both chewed the outsides of the fronts more than anything, both were dead within spec on alignment. Wearing the insides on the front is just wrong for a stock 6. They've all got zero or somewhat positive front camber and toe *should* be zero. Killing the insides before the rest of the tire says you've got toe out and not exactly a small amount of it.

Yep, '04 6i sport. We've put right around 100k on it. As far as positive camber, you may want to talk to whomever is doing your alignments. Camber ranges for my car at least do not include any positive numbers.