statgator

Hello All,

I'm hoping that somebody here can pretty much educate me on this situation from the ground up.

I've only owned my Audi for just over a year and a half. In that time I put approximately 13K miles on a set of Michelin all season tires on stock wheels. I do a mixture of highway and city driving.

This morning I went for a tire rotation with about 13K miles on the tires and I was told that the tread is at 5/? And 6/? Starting at around 9/?.

They are telling me that by October I should come in and I will get a rebate from Michelin for a set of new tires. Can anyone please explain exactly what that means? Is it just a spin and you end up paying too much again?

Now about the tires and the cost. On sale the cheapest price I can get for these tires was $1750 and that was among the cheapest tires I could get at the time. Within $100. For my economy this is unbelievably steep to think that I'll have to pay almost 2K for tires every 20K miles. Is this what most Audi drivers are doing?

Could doing something like changing my wheels to a smaller size or something like that improve this situation? Essentially switching out of this size tire to get more tire options? I would really like some advice here because this is a very steep price to pay and now my 50 mpg isn't sounding so amazing...

Thanks

Striker2237

Replace the control arms and have everything re-aligned, I rotate every 5k with oil and all my cars are on track to reach mileage warranty.

These cars will eat tires if you aren't aligned or have worn suspension and if you don't rotate them. They have a lot of camber and are aggressively setup, it's pay to play to an extent as well and I'm happy to get 20k miles out of tires.

You never buy a car like these to save money btw, mpg or not.

statgator

I needed a day to sit with this. Aggravating.

Do you think switching wheel size can get me into a different tire that will last longer or is this just it?

I know you're telling me to change the control arms etc... but I have even wear all the way around. Off by one front to back. The car tracks perfect so I don't think it has any issue.

A8L_New_England

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A change in brand might serve you well, if cost is a factor. https://www.audiworld.com/forums/a8-.../#post25801884
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Striker2237

Are your inner and outer shoulders wearing the same?

statgator

Yes my tires look great. I don't see any weird anything going on other than they don't look brand new anymore.

New England, thanks for the link, I'm having very good luck with Kumho on the Scion xB but it is a light car.

I need to get the details from discount tire on this rebate program related to premature wear. Like can I take those rebate dollars to a different brand would be interesting.

RobertISaar

How many miles on the car/front suspension?

andrewmr

Yes, going down in size will give you a much better selection of tires with much better wear rating.

statgator

I don't know. I've only had it for about a year and a half and approximately 13k mi.

It runs smooth and true at any speed and I am incredibly sensitive to that sort of thing.

RobertISaar

If you have perfectly even wear on a tire, and your only real difference is that one axle has a hint less wear than the other, nothing is wrong.

You have soft tread or drive in conditions that burns away tread quicker than you would like.

I don't think I've ever gotten more than 25k miles on a tire in my S8.