My 2005 RX8 blew a right rear tire yesterday. Upon inspecting the tire the inside 1" was worn past the cords, the outside of the tire has 1/2 tread on it. I checked the drivers side and it appears to be the same wear pattern. I put a level on the wheel and it is a full bubble off, the fronts are level vertically. Any ideas?

 

um, take it in for an alignment?

sounds like excessive rear negative camber

 

Is that even a question ?

Is funny that he actually ask *Any ideas?*, Im shock that these days, certain people with a sports car does NOT know what Alignment is. sad, poor rx-8.

Next thing I know is *My engine is making weird noise, any ideas?* then we find out the owner has never changed the oil, and then *oh, you have to change oil?*

 

stop launching at 5k at every stop light

 

Was the rim okay? No offense, but how did you not notice that driving or even checking your tires regularly?? You could of caught it rotating them too.

For how much I spent on tires for this car, I like to look at them a lot

 

Did you purchase this car used? If so, I would suspect that the previous owner dialed in a little negative camber to improve handling, possibly for autocrossing or tracking the car. Can't imagine both rear wheels would both have negative camber unless someone did that on purpose.

 

I just purchased my 8 last month and I also had a blown tire with the same description as the op. I replaced the tire and saw it was visibally leaning in towards the car. I took it to get an alignment and they adjusted it a bit but its still leaning a little bit. The tech swore it was the alignment mazda called for but I don't want to eat up expensive tires. Any ideas?

 

The minimum camber for our car starts at like .5 for the front and 1 for the rear. Its going to "appear" to lean because thats how its designed to ride. It should be fine if they aligned the car to the specs.

 

rotate the front and rear tires regularly to even out the rear camber wear.

most likely your car's rear tires were never rotated to the front, so it took excessive negative camber wear on top of faster wear due to the rear being drive wheels as well.