My spouse has one standing order if she ever gets a flat. Drive it to the next exit with flashers on (reduced speed) in break down lane. No point in getting killed while changing a tire.

 

I had an interesting problem with my car. My rear tires are wearing really funny. The inner and outer edge of the tires are almost worn bald and the middle is puckered. The car is making a weird noise like there's a flat tire.

The dealer says its cuz I keep my tires at 40psi and said they wouldn't replace them even with only 12000 miles on em. They also tried to tell me that because I did my own tire rotation that they didn't have a record of them being rotated and so Honda wouldn't cover em.

Advice? The service manager tried telling me that if they're not at the recommended pressure of 32psi as noted on the inside of the door that Honda wouldn't pay for em.

Thanks,
Jayson

 

Interesting. Did you not notice anything at the first tire rotation? I did my first rotation at about 9,000 mi.... so if yours was about the same, and you didn't notice the problem at the rotation, then ALL the wear occured in just 3,000 mi. All the wear also happened on one axle (assuming you did the rotation recommended in the owner's manual, your fronts get swapped with the rears).

If you had inner OR outer tire wear, I'd say you had a bad camber problem. If you have both inner and outer, that's typically from severely under inflated tires (but that's not the case here... unless your tire pressure gauge is messed up!).

This one's awfully strange. Can you take a shot of the tire and post it? Thanks.

NOTE: My only guess here is that you have a bad camber problem... (maybe you're hauling something REALLY heavy in the back?) and you rotated your tires left to right on the same axle.

 

Yeah, there are better ways to get killed

 

I'm surprised Jayson that the Honda dealer didn't defer you to the local tire shop that handles the brand of tires that are on your vehicle. I didn't think the actual Honda dealer dealt with tire issues. You might have better luck finding your local tire dealer, lower your pressure to 32 psi, and take the care into them for an appraisal.

This is whack. Whether you do your own tire rotation, change your own oil, etc. - whatever the maintenance, your warranty is still in effect. Sounds like these guys you're dealing with are brow beating you. I'd go "over their heads" if you can't get satisfaction. Ask them for the number of the Honda Field Rep, or whoever is above them. Perhaps then they will be a little more cooperative.

Mike

 

Yup I did the rotation at 8600 miles, front to back. It's only the rear tires at this point. They said the front ones are perfectly fine.

Well I hope it's not screwed up. I use it on all the tires. I check em every couple of weeks and always around 39.5/40. Yeah, they said both the inner and outer edge are really worn down and that the middle is severely uneven(can't remember the word they used for it).

I could try to do that.

Not carrying anything heavy in my trunk. I had a computer keyboard in their and a baby seat adapter but thats it. They think it might need an alignment as well. They set up a 3 hour appointment to get everything taken care of next week. I'm still not sure whether or not I'll have to pay for the tires.

They said that honda warrantees the tires for the first year/12,000 miles (so does the manufacturer, but if it's alignment wanted to make sure it was taken care of) but that they would want to know what happened that caused them to go bad. They told me that I would need to prove that I rotated them in the future. I kept coming back to the fact that the car has 12k miles on it and the tires should not be going that fast.

Thanks,
Jayson

 

Yeah thats how I thought of it too. I thought that they would need to show that it was my lack of maintenance that caused the problem. So if my engine blew up they'd have to show that it was my lack of oil changes or whatnot. The guys at the shop said they've never seen wear like this and are assuming it's an alignment problem. If it is shouldn't that take my tire rotations out of the picture. Especially considering there's only 12000 miles on the car.

So far I have not been really impressed with this dealers service dept.

Jayson

 

This seems like a good idea regarding tire pressure... But you would need one of those IR thermometers to do it.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Automob.../Tire_pressure