Holy Cow Chris - I put PepBoy's Futura's on my cars these days and if I don't get 50K out of them before I get rid of them, I don't put on a mile. I'm not real good about rotating my tires either. If I had a tire that crapped out at 15K, I'd never be putting that brand of tire on anything but a rope swing.
The Festiva I had was also front wheel drive and I never had this problem. I agree with you here Mike, if I was only getting 15k (let alone the 30k that I only got from these) I would be out of my mind mad right now.
Scott
I'd be unhappy with tire wear like you're seeing Scott. Look the tires over - what's the wear? Indicative of toe problems? Camber problems? Shock problems? Even a front wheel drive car should deliver 50K miles on the front tires assuming a decent tire to start with so anything less, like you're experiencing is pointing to a problem.
A lot of cars don't list camber adjustments anymore, yet they really can benefit from it. I take my cars to a guy that does nothing but front end alignments and in that field, he's almost a magician. My '98 Regal was listed by the factory as requiring a Camber setting of 0 and he put 1/8 in the car. He had to grind out the holes the McPherson bolts through in order to make slots of them, and then was able to adjust 1/8" into the car. It went from ok tire wear to excellent tire wear. I cannot say for a certainty, but I'd like to also say that the frequency with which I had to replace wheel bearings was pleasantly affect as well.
The other point I failed to make but became obvious after your response is that driving patterns and climate makes a big difference too. Under 15K sounds short, but you are thinking of a normal city/highway mix. This car, under its previous owner (my dad), served 6 years almost exclusively in daily commuting through torturous urban traffic. Those
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