Just went to get a puncture repair and had three new tyres! 5 month old STi with 5k miles. 3mm left on the fourth. Is this normal or am I doing something wrong? The Potenzas were all worn on the inside edge.

 

Depends on how hard you've driven it, tyre pressure, roads, etc.

Inside edge wear on the front would indicate a variation of the 'Prodrive' toe-in setting to minimise understeer. Although this makes the handling/turn-in better, it is known to wear the tyres a bit more. However, 5K in 5months (assuming tyres from new?) seems excessive to me. Maybe worth checking the geom or slow down around corners .

 

If I understand this correctly you have replaced 3 of the 4 tyres on your Scooby? This is a no-no on an AWD car, tyres should always be replaced in pairs on the same axle. Having a worn tyre and a new tyre can ultimately damage the diff, and the handling will be pretty awful. Anyway regardless of AWD on not personally I would always replace tyres in pairs on any car just because of the handling implications alone.

Regarding the uneven wear, it's not uncommon for Imprezas. You might what to consider getting you geometry set to Prodrive settings by someone like PowerStation, may improve the tyre wear. The tolerances as they come out of the factory are pretty wide.

 

Cheers - must admit I was concerned with only three of the four being replaced - was going to check with the dealer. This is the probelm with it being a company car....the authorisers are incentivsed on keeping maintenance costs down

 

I read it as 3 new and one repaired tyre.

Agreed though - if the repaired tyre has low tread deptth, having a such a wide disparity between treads in a 4WD, especially on the same axle, is not recommended!

 

There's always the spare

 

As its a company car why would you worry about damaging the diff?

 

ther's a spare ?? i thought that was for my bike

 

Just because it's someone elses property? - quality.

 

Show them a picture of a scooby wrapped around a tree, and caption it "this is what happens when you have uneven tyres"
(ps. It'll knacker the diff)

I had this argment with my company a year or so back and eventually won when I asked them to put the instruction to only replace one tyre in writing before I would do it.