rickbear

I am going through tires very quickly on a '99 NSX T. Service people tell me not to adjust the alignment to reduce wear as it will hurt the suspension.

Does anyone have a solution to the high (5,000 miles per set) tire wear on the car?

How much mileage are others getting?

Thanks Rick

Super7

NSXs are notorious for tire wear. Suspension settings/geometry dictate this. Its simply part of the price of admission, imo.

What tires are you running?

rickbear

The first set was Bridgestone Potenza. I replaced them with Michelin Pilot Sports. Used regular sizes. The Bridgestones were toast on the rear at under 5,000 miles.

nsxtasy

Your mileage is typical. You can increase your tire life by swapping the OEM tires (which were designed specifically for the NSX) for lower-performance ones, as you have done. You can also increase your tire life by reducing the toe in the alignment. But you're still going to be replacing tires pretty often, maybe 7-8K miles, 10K if you're lucky. And, of course, this is primarily the rear tires; front tires should last at least twice as long as the rears.

In my opinion, there's not much point in trying to save money by using crappy tires. Why spend over $60K for the high performance of an NSX, only to compromise that performance by using long-life tires or different alignment settings that are going to make the car handle poorly? Think about it - if (like most NSX owners) you spend $500 every 5K miles on rear tires, using those great-handling OEM tires (Bridgestone Potenza RE010 or Yokohama A022H), then you are spending $10K on rear tires every 100K miles. That's only a small fraction of what you paid for your high performance supercar. If you consider this a serious problem, then you might be better off spending your money on a different kind of car, like a luxury car or family car.

rickbear

Thanks. Your points are good ones. I had a BMW M-3 prior to this that was pretty sweet and didn't seem to touch the tires with wear. I'll acknowledge that the M-3 isn't an NSX, but it isn't an Oldsmobile either.

Do you have any specs on the toe in adjustment?

nsxtasy

Yes, it's described in the alignment section of the NSX FAQ. Click here.

I don't know where you're taking your NSX for service, but the folks at Woodfield Acura (847-519-9550) in Hoffman Estates have developed a lot of expertise in the NSX. You can show them the alignment information and which alignment you'd like to have it set to, and they'll be happy to oblige. Great experience, great service. Also quite close to you. They're one of only two Acura dealerships (out of nine) in the Chicago area that really do a lot of work and understand the NSX (the other is Pauly in Highland Park), not counting Acura of Brookfield outside Milwaukee, which also has a lot of NSXpertise.

nsxtasy

P.S. One of the reasons the designers of the OEM tires were so successful is that they designed each tire specifically not just for the NSX, but for a particular corner of the NSX, knowing that it would be (for example) a "right rear" tire. If you would like to read more about the OEM tires, and how they were designed to work in concert with the NSX alignment (and why they wear quickly), click here for the Tire Tech section of the NSX FAQ.

laseca

Getting 5-7K miles from the rears is typical. I have stock Yokohama A022s and with a few open track events and substantial freeway driving, I managed to get 11K miles from my rears. I have 7K miles on my current set with slightly less than half of the tire life left. My alignment was set to the 1994 specs back in 1997. Yeah, it's been five years since I had an alignment on my NSX but the tires are wearing well and evenly across the tire.

Paul

rickbear

I really want to thank you all for your help on this. I'm very new to the car, and to the board. I will try Woodfield Acura, as they are close by and I agree that NSX experience is critical.

I love the car, but need to get a little better tire wear. Sounds like I've gotten good help.

Is anyone seeing unusual suspension wear as the result of changing settings? I was warned by one very experienced dealer that I could save tires but ruin the suspension?

nsxtasy

In a nutshell, they don't know what they're talking about. Slight changes in the alignment settings (and the ones we are talking about are slight) can't "ruin" the suspension. And suspension does not "wear" - at least, not quickly enough to make any observations based on alignment settings. (The only suspension item that really wears are the struts - also called shocks - and they last as long as on any other car, from 40K to 100K miles, way too long to see any effect from changing alignments.)

Maybe they were claiming that you could change the handling characteristics of the car that way - which is true, but may be an acceptable trade-off for you.