Advice on tires

[brico84]

I have a 2017 S75 RWD that is in for service right now. They are telling me I need new tires. I bought the car last year April and it had mostly new Bridgestone Potenza S04s with 9/32 tread all around. Rims are 19 inch.

They are saying that my fronts are between 7/32 and 8/32, but the back is 3/32 and 4/32. I asked why they don't just rotate them and they say they can't/shouldn't because the tread difference is too great and that after they get below 5/32 they don't recommend rotation as the car will likely have ABS or traction control lights going off due to the diameter (tread) difference from front to back.

Anyone have experience with this?

I have a feeling of they rotate em they'll be just fine and I'll get a few thousand miles more out of them.... But this is my first Tesla.

 

[Takumi]

I wouldn't rotate them for safety reasons. Your front tires are what allow you to steer and more tread means less likely to hydroplane. It also handles the majority of braking. Tires are not an area you want to cheap out on. Replacing tires for safety is better than replacing the whole car & the time that goes with it.

Please replace your tires and help keep our insurance premiums down. Thank you.

 

[Murdock]

I just replaced my Continentals with Pirelli Scorpion AS plus 3.
wow, what a difference the smoother ride is and road noise.
Don’t know what kind of miles they will get, but worth it so far worth it.

 

[brico84]

I wouldn't rotate them for safety reasons. Your front tires are what allow you to steer and more tread means less likely to hydroplane. It also handles the majority of braking. Tires are not an area you want to cheap out on. Replacing tires for safety is better than replacing the whole car & the time that goes with it.

Please replace your tires and help keep our insurance premiums down. Thank you.

Well what's blowing my mind is they were all at 9/32 less than 4,000 miles ago. I can't be spending $1400 on new tires every 4,000 miles. If rotating is not advised I'll leave them as is for now before replacing all 4, but I'm not replacing at the moment as I'm not having any issues right now.

 

[ucmndd]

The ABS/traction control light stuff is bullshit. Just rotate them. If they won't do it take it somewhere else or do it yourself. It's wasteful to replace tires with 4/32" tread left. You should ask them why the traction control / ABS lights aren't on right now if this "problem" they're telling you about is really a problem.

The RWD definitely chews through rear tires much faster than fronts - my observation is the same as yours. They do need to be rotated frequently. This is because the rears do all of the acceleration and ~90% of the braking due to regen.

 

[PCMc]

My experience with the Protenza S0x line is a few years ago, but ran them on my Honda S2000. They handle great, but there are a pretty soft tire. Even just driving in like a normal daily driver I was doing good to get 12,500~13,000 miles out of a set of rears. Now the S04 version these days may be better than the S02s which I used 5-10 years ago, but if long tread wear is your priority, you may want to consider a different tire.

 

[Kairide]

Couldn't you just buy 2 new tires? The 7/32 and 8/32 tires don't need to be replaced. Since it's not an AWD, you don't need to worry about keeping your tires within a certain tolerance range of each other when replacing.

 

[David.85D]

I have a 2017 S75 RWD that is in for service right now. They are telling me I need new tires. I bought the car last year April and it had mostly new Bridgestone Potenza S04s with 9/32 tread all around. Rims are 19 inch.

They are saying that my fronts are between 7/32 and 8/32, but the back is 3/32 and 4/32. I asked why they don't just rotate them and they say they can't/shouldn't because the tread difference is too great and that after they get below 5/32 they don't recommend rotation as the car will likely have ABS or traction control lights going off due to the diameter (tread) difference from front to back.

Anyone have experience with this?

I have a feeling of they rotate em they'll be just fine and I'll get a few thousand miles more out of them.... But this is my first Tesla.

What a crazy answer! It’s really bad to run tires of different sizes with conventional AWD because some mechanical part has to accommodate the difference in rotations.

An AWD Tesla has a front motor and a rear motor and they aren’t connected!

Plenty of other reasons not to keep the worn tires, but warning lights from the car isn’t one.

If you didn’t know, tire rack will custom shave tires when you need a couple of replacements that are mid life. It’s worth thinking about and comparing the cost and estimated life compared to getting 4 new tires.

Finally, places like Costco sell the same tires and are 30+% cheaper.

 

[brico84]

Thanks for the help guys. They roasted them for me and I pick it up tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get a little more life put of them before needing to replace.

 

[brico84]

Thanks for the help guys. They roasted them for me and I pick it up tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get a little more life put of them before needing to replace.

Lasted another 6 months.... time to replace.

Now the annoying hunt begins for the "best replacement option". Too many options and opinions, its overwhelming. Leaning towards the pirelli P zero elects though. Looking for comfort, range, and longevity. Live in FL so don't need winter or even all season tires.

 

[PCMc]

I have no experience with them on a Model S, but ran many a set of Protenzia S04 tires on my Honda S2000. Those are a very soft performance tire. On my S2000 I was lucky to get 12k-13k miles out of a set of rears even with modest driving. That was running them all the way down to the wear bars such that I started to thing strategically if I was going to drive the car if there was significant risk of rain in the forecast. I could push the fronts to about twice that, so 25k, but by that time the inside edge was totally worn down.

So if you're complaint of short tire life is with continuing to run Protenzia S04s, then yeah, it's all about an incredibly soft, sticky, tire compound and you have two choices. Either accept you'll continue to replace tires frequently or look for a different tire.

 

[airborne spoon]

there are a thousand threads on tires already. i get about 15k miles from my Falkens and they are much cheaper than those stupid Michelins.
Also if your tires have 7/32 left those are still good tires and no need to replace. the 3/32 ones are low and you should look at replacing soon. tesla is starting to act like other dealerships and trying to replace *sugar* that doesn't need to be replaced.

 

[maximizese]

I got 60K miles on a set of Goodyear Eagle RS-A2s on our RWD S85. 90% of the miles are freeway/highway and after the first month of owning the car, we stopped showing off the gleeful passing power of a Tesla and went back to driving like a mere mortal. We never had the tires rotated but the rears did wear slightly faster than the fronts. Between 35K-50K mile mark on the tires, our Tesla went to the Service Center to have the eMMC replaced, TPMS replaced, drive unit/HV contactors/pyro fuse/HVAC drain hose replaced, and finally the MCU2 upgrade. Each visit the service tech kept trying to get me to replace the tires for $1,600. I kept declining and finally replaced them for under $1,000 at America's Tire.

I was disappointed that the Tesla Service Reps would push for unneccessary tire replacements...it seemed wasteful considering I got another 25K miles out of them. Probably could have stretched another 10K miles, but they just do not perform as well and get both noisy and rough when they're beyond 4/32.

 

[Jsvette56]

I wanted a quieter riding tire for my Model S so I bought Bridgestone Quiettrack tires. They have a Consumers Report of excellent on noise abatement and are definitely quieter than factory tires.