Dammit
Apparently the tires on my Mazda 3 are near death. One went flat the other day. The mechanic at Canadian Tire blamed wheel alignment. This pisses me off. My car only has 27000 km on it. I bought a new car to avoid this shit for awhile.
I wonder if I can get them to cover this on Warranty. I have a feeling though I am SOL and will have to buy new tires.
Cars fucking suck. I feel I am working to own a car that doesn’t work.
I have a similar problem with my Elantra. At 20,000 miles, I noticed a bit of pulling. They did an alignment, but the damage to the tires was done. They’re unevenly worn and noisy even on fresh pavement - I get a “wum-wum-wum” sound. I need new tires, but at $500 for a set, unless Santa’s good to me this Christmas I don’t know when I can afford them.
My experience has been dealers will weasel out. Even the tire manufacturers will. My new tires are not getting the mileage I expected. They also claim wheel alignment problems, which they will fix for a fee. The days of customer service are going away.
Cars go out of alignment if you hit something hard like a pot hole , so I doubt any car warranty is going to cover alignments. They might cover an alignment if you had a defective part in the system.
More to the point, any suspension setup that is so rigid that it would not cause a misalignment when a bump is hit would surely break, and that would be a much more expensive repair, doubtless one blamed on the manufacturer.
As for tires that wear prematurely for other reasons, do you check your tire pressure every day for over or under-inflation? Do you have a bad valve stem that causes air to leak? Do you speed? Do you apply the brakes late? All of the above will cause premature wear.
A manufacturer builds tires to DOT standards. Those standards, like EPA mileage, do not necessarily reflect actual usage, and since driving behavior is variable in nature anyway it’s certainly not their fault that they might wear “too soon”.
Does anyone check their tire pressure everyday? Just wondering…
Do I speed? Speeding is relative. If I go 40k in a 30 zone is that speeding? Do you mean accelerate? If so I don’t think I’m any different then the average (the Maz 3 is fun but certainly no sports car)
All four tires are equally damaged, so I would be surprised if it’s four valve stems.
I break quite normally.
I just feel like as an average driver, my tires are bad, or the information given to me when I purchased the vehicle was misleading.
If you go 40,000 in a 30 zone, that’ll certainly wear your tires down.
I check every other week or every two fill-ups; whichever comes first. And I usually have my tires rotated every 15,000-20,000 miles. Don’t know if that accounts for my tires usually having a long life or not. (My Saturn Vue went 55,000 miles on the first set/factory originals) I DO NOT use the gauge on the air pump at the gas station; those are rarely right. I use my own calibrated tire gauge.
I wonder – does Canada require anything funky in tire compounds or suspension compared to other places? California used to have some strange air pollution standards for exhausts back in the 70s - so much so that certain pipes Harley used at the factory were just for bikes being sold there. Or should have been; we usually got a couple a year so equipped. End result was poorer mileage and some other problems. I’m wondering if short tire life is just more common north of the border because of something the manufacturers have to place on the Canadian models.
Are those winter or summer tires? Because winter tires do wear out quicker, since they are softer (and they should not be driven as fast on dry roads - max. of about 120 km/h, I think - as summer tires).
When changing between summer and winter tires, the tires are usually rotated if they have been marked last time they were taken off.
Do you drive a lot over sharp borders of the walkway? That damages tires hard.
Did you look at the tires yourself and decide that they’re near death, or did you get a flat tire, go to a tire shop, and they told you you need 4 new tires? Not saying you don’t, but I’d make sure they’re not just trying to make a quick sale.
That said, the Mazda3 has big heavy 17" wheels and a suspension that is tuned for spirited driving. I’d also suspect that the BFG tires on it are a lot softer than the OE equipment on, say, a Buick Regal. In other words, the same things that make the car look good and fun to drive (i.e., that got you to buy the car in the first place) also make the tires wear fast. This link is full of people whose tires also lasted only about 17-20,000 miles. There’s a lot of talk about the camber being a “defect,” but I think Mazda knew exactly what they were doing when they set the suspension specs. Just be glad you didn’t get a real sports car – some people would love to get 16,000 miles out of a set of tires.
Long story short, I think you just have a car that’s gonna go through tires every 20,000 miles by design. If you’d gotten a Corolla, the hard-as-a-rock 195/65-R15s would probably have lasted you like 60,000 miles, but then you’d probably be pretty miserable driving around in a Corolla (compared to the Mazda, which is much more fun to drive).
Bah! The mechanic showed me why they were close to death. I could feel the worn down tires with my hands. Yes I check my tire pressure and all tires have been fine until the one went flat. I didn’t know that about. When I likely have to buy new tires can someone recommend me a long lasting tire?
I have an 08 Mazda 3.
The original tires on the car were complete pieces of crap–not because they wore quickly, but because the supposedly “all season” tires functioned not at all in the snow.
I replaced them with a set of Michelins, which I’ve had for 45,000 miles, and they still have some miles left on them. Most of my driving is at 80 mph.
The Mazda has tire pressure sensors, BTW, so checking the tire pressure isn’t really all that onerous.
The choices are rather limited (assuming you have the same wheels I do). If you go to tires.com, you can read reviews for your tire size. I’ve got Michelins (Pilots, I think).
You can plug in your car and see options at tirerack.com. Pay special attention to the UTQG, aka the treadwear rating, and any relevant customer reviews. Keep in mind that the UTQG is self-reported by the manufacturer, and while it’s fine as a rough guideline when comparing tires, especially from the same manufacturer, it’s not a gold standard.
ETA this link: Uniform Tire Quality Grading - Wikipedia
What brand/model/size/speed rating are your tires?
Auto makers will sometimes choose tires that optimize the test drive experience and magazine reviews (low noise, good handling, track grip, braking) and not worry about mileage.
The higher a tire’s speed rating, the lower its mileage tends to be. So there are more “T” rated tires (rated up to 118mph) that last 60,000 miles, than there are “V-rated” tires (149mph).
Recently I inherited a car that was specced for V-rated tires and discovered that such tires were expensive, mostly short-lived and didn’t perform a whole lot better than good tires with lower speed ratings.
…which wouldn’t have upset me, except that the car didn’t have high horse power, wasn’t fast off the line, and is never going to go 95 mph, let alone 149.
Anyway, let us know what size and speed rating your car uses and I might have some recommendations.
In terms of manufacturers warranty, a good rule of thumb I have applied across several dealerships is this, if the mileage on the vehicle is below 5000, and the tyres show evidence of uneven wear, then a case can be made for some manufacturing defect on the vehicle causing the problem, and as such we will process a warranty claim.
In this case, with the vehicle at 27000, and what I guess is even wear across all four tyres, no dealer I worked for would entertain a straight forward warranty claim (Special policy goodwill requests are a different matter, and even then I would only expect a contibution to cost rather than tyre replacement, as regardless of fault, you have actually got 27000 mls worth of use from what is a wearable, service item)
I do not have any paperwork to hand, but I believe that tyre cover has its own section in many vehicle warranty agreements, and sits outside most bumper-to-bumper full coverage agreements (similar to bodywork/paintwork claims in that respect) This is understandable I guess, Renault/Toyota/Ford etc are car manufacturers, not tyre manufacturers, and so they will be careful before assuming liability for a product they are using, but did not build, and especially a product that is so easily influenced/affected by driver performance.
Just my thoughts, take them as you will.
I owned a 06 Mazda 3 S it was fun to drive but my tires had to be replaced inside of 30k miles. Also I think somebody touched on it above but I rotated my tires every oil change. The camber on the Mazda will wear out the rear tires unevenly. Maybe related to the tires too but the car was horrible in the snow. I loved that car though, every once and a while I pass the guy I sold it to and stare wistfully.
Psst … read the OP. He’s got 27,000 kilometers (km) worth of use out of them. That’s not quite 17,000 miles, by my quick mental arithmetic.
In your haste to correct somebody on the internet you have missed the bigger picture that my living in a country that uses miles rather than kilometers changes the point of my post not one fucking iota.
Well done.
stupid morals