Michelin Primacy MXV4 - 20,000+ mile report

Yes, another tire thread. Couldn't find an existing thread that seemed a good fit to piggy-back on (to me anyway).

Last year (Nov) I replaced the OEM tires at only 21K miles on the car. Installed Michelin Primacy MXV4 195/60R15 88H. Alignment was checked and adjusted as well. (The car drove straight and I had no clue alignment was off.) I was mostly after a quality tire with a quiet ride. I wanted a better tread wear rating than the MXV4 carries, but sacrificed that for the promise of reduced tire noise.

Tread depth new on these tires is 11/32in. Looking at the tires over the past year I've kept the feeling that they are "new" because they look it. Tire shop does free rotations/rebalance every 5K miles, so I've been getting that done. I want the tires to last and if they don't I want to have a clean warranty claim with Michelin.

Out of curiosity I took a measurement of tread depth today as best I could. With some margin for error I think I still have about 7/32nds. Perfectly even wear across the tire, thanks to 42/40 inflation, rotations and getting the alignment done.

60K mile Warranty claim starts at the 2/32nds tread wear indicator. So in 20K miles I've worn off 4/32nds and there's 5/32nds left to go before they are worn out.

I don't think these tires will make it to 60K miles but so far they are wearing FAR better than OEM. Maybe they'll see 45K? They are in fact quieter and drive nicely, tho I can't say I've pushed them to limits. On the highway they handle standing water (we get that occasionally in Oregon!) very well. After break-in I don't think there was any real FE penalty either.

My main lesson here is that alignment issues really kill tires. I already knew this of course, but seeing it on both of our cars in the past year has driven it home. Even if you don't think it's off, get it checked when putting on new tires and once per year after.

- D

 

Had the wheels off the front over the weekend so I snapped some pics. They are now at about 25K miles and wearing well as you can see in the photos. As I was going around picking stones out of the treads I noticed the nail. Good thing because it may have eventually pushed through.

- D