Need help from the community...

[cyled]

All,

I went through and read most of the postings on tire ware. It seems most of us have seen the same problems, inside front and the middle of the rears. I have drove my 20,000 miles and the middle of my rears look like they have been on for 50,000.
I have only have had mine since December and at 20,000 the middle should not be wore out. I feel BF Goodrich or Mecury has chosen the incorrect tire pressure range.
One post I saw said that he was running at 30 psi and has not seen uneven tire wear. I feel it is going take all of us with emails to Mercury to have them look into the issue or at least visiting the dealer. I am not wanting us to become hostile, just make enough noise to make Mercury take notice. I understand these are high performance and I guess if the whole tire was this way I would say it was my driving, but just the middle when the outside edges are still good is another issue.
I have taken mine in and the dealer has talked to the regional person and they bascially say that is just the way it is.

Again, I am not asking us to send hate mail, just do our due diligence by showing up to the dealers and logging a formal complaint. You can also call the Customer Center at 800-392-3673.

[Petrograde]

At just over 5K miles I haven't noticed any wear yet. But, it is my understanding that the 04 MMs tire pressure is recommended at 35 psi, or so says the sticker in the gas door

[cyclone03]

Yes 35psi for the 04's.
The reason for that is not to improve tire wear,it's to pick up the mileage.
My source for this info,just some guy that was in Marauderville with us this weekend.

Mac hit it on the head about 9 mounths ago 28-30psi in the rear 30 in the front.This is for tire wear only,your MMV.

[jgc61sr2002]

By increasing the tire pressure from 32 to 35 lbs, I would think the center of the tires will wear at a greater rate. IMHO.

[Donald]

I was running 34 psi and the centers of my rears were down to the markers. I plan to try the new ones at 33 for some miles.

[schuvwj]

The only way I have achieved proper tire wear is 28 psi in rear or your centers will wear bald in 12,000 miles and 30 psi in front.

At every oil change the Dealer still puts 32psi in rear and front.

[Mongoose]

From day one, unknown to me, the dealer was putting 40 PSI in mine. All 4 centers were smooth at 34K miles (90% of all my miles are on the interstate @75-85 MPH). I put a new set of same tires back on and now keep them @ 32 PSI per the OEM sticker on the inside of the driver's door. Looking good so far.

[cyled]

This is a common problem that I feel we need to get Mercury to take notice. If you have taken your car to the dealer and it is documented that this is an issue for your tires, I would like to know. Mercury will not do anything if they don't see the numbers.
I will post a vote of who has seen unusual tire wear to get an idea of how many we are talking about. This will not help with Mercury, that has to be done at the dealer. It will help at least for them to start looking through their files if we can give them a number of people with this issue.

[Dave Compson]

I have that exact same problem with my tires wearing out. How many miles are we supposte to get out of these high performance tires? What does bfg say? Count me in, i dont know what i can do. But lets stick together.

Frustrated...

[Mongoose]

I don't think BFG gives these tires a mileage rating because they are performance tires. As far as the specs go for the 03's, you can check out the URL below. I don't know if this link will work but you can paste in your browser if it doesn't.

http://www.bfgoodrichtires.com/assets/pdf/gforce_ta_kdws.pdf

Charlie:burnout:

[JET]

Originally posted by Mongoose
From day one, unknown to me, the dealer was putting 40 PSI in mine. All 4 centers were smooth at 34K miles (90% of all my miles are on the interstate @75-85 MPH). I put a new set of same tires back on and now keep them @ 32 PSI per the OEM sticker on the inside of the driver's door. Looking good so far.

Mongoose, Congrats on the milage. If it was so good the for the first set then why would you change the pressure on the new ones.

HOW LONG SHOULD THESE TIRES LAST?

Folks, you just have to deal with it these are high performance tires and they're made for performance not for longevity. In my opinion they should be good for the first 15k and them the performance starts to drop. Shore you can drive on them till they fall off but they are not going to perform very well. Dealing with performance factors your tires are very if not the most important factor. I changed mine in the early 20k's but i should have done it sooner.

[Mongoose]

1) With the way I drive I felt I should get 40K miles out of the original rubber (came close, maybe my expectations were too high).
2) With the uneven tire wear, traction on wet pavement suffered.
3) Decided it was better to follow OEM recommendation of 32PSI and forego the mileage expectation and maintain the handling with more even tire wear.

What really ticked me off though was the day when I took the MM for an oil change and routine check-up and mentioned this issue with the LM service mgr. He blamed me for over-inflating the tires and not checking them. All along, I thought that's what I was paying him to do. That night I the car felt a little spongey in turns so I checked the PSI and all 4 were at 25PSI!!! I called the service mgr the next day and he said they lowered the PSI to even out the wear. I put four new tires on that afternoon and haven't been back to that dealer since (this was the same dealer who told me he couldn't fix the perrenial MM subwoofer/mastic problem because he didn't have a TSB on that problem, again I fixed that myself). But I do agree with what you say and tire mileage will vary depending on several factors. The best advice I can give is don't rely on anyone but yourself to monitor the condition of your tires because like you say, they're important when it comes to performance..

[Dave Compson]

I lodged my complaint with mercury customer support. They refered me to one of my local SVT dealers to have the alignment checked. Well, what do you know, a phone call from my mercury dealer when i was at work this evening... Hum, tommrow i should be getting another call from them. I complained to mercury until i was blue in the face. I hope it helps someone / somewhere. But i wont hold my breath.

[Paul T. Casey]

I got 30K on first set, same wear pattern as noted by many others here. Called Ford and listed my complaint, also about paint concerns. As stated in this thread, I don't expect much more than 30K, but do expect more even wear. Dealer did alignment, said these platforms may be a little sensitive to wander out of alignment. Now at 6K on new tires and alignment and don't notice any unusual wear, but I'll keep watching. If you catch your front end out of alignment within 12K, most dealerships will fix it for free. It may be worth the money to have it checked just before that.

[DeadVic]

If you want results from a dealer on any issue you have to go over dealers heads to the ford's district area manager.

My uncle has worked with dealers as a district area manager and then a manager of the district managers for over 25 years (not for ford) If you ever need a problem solved with a dealer, you call the district manager for Ford. I have played this card a couple times with two different dealers. One told me no such person existed and the other refused to provide a name. I got the data and used it. Never had another issue with either dealership and they kissed my ass at every opportunity. Although one was very upset that I would do something like that. He thought it was dirty pool, as he put it. Complaints like that to the person who allocates inventory can really hurt a dealer where it counts ($$).

If this is truly an issue for almost all owners, we need to get together and blanket FMC with our complaint and forget about hitting up the dealers.

I know we tried this over at crownvic.net with the intake manifold issue to no avail, so I don't expect much more here.

[Stormin Norman]

Mongoose,,
I checked my tire pressure before leaving for Ennis and found all 4 at 25 psi.. I inflated the fronts to 33 and rears to 28 psi. The car still drives and handles the same.

Norm

[Mongoose]

Norm,
How many miles do you have on your tires and are they worn down in the center? Also, I do a lot of driving on grooved concrete and this where the spongey feeling was most noticable.
Charlie