New tires

I'll be sure to tell that to the set of Ecopias I had to replace at least a year early. Plenty of meat on both inside and outside edges, but down to the minimum in the centers. I was running 38 PSI Front/ 36 PSI Rear. I now run 36/35 now, and wear is much more even across the tread.

I'm averaging 4.7 L/100 km (50.1 MPG (US)), but get tanks varying between 4.0 L/100 km (best) to 5.4 L/100 km (worst) (58.8 - 43.5 MPG (US)) and can't really figure out any particular reason except the worst seems to happen a lot more when SWMBO is driving.

 

Count your blessings: Our current tank the gauge was sitting around 5.9 (terrifically short trips, grocery runs). Missus went out for the day, got it back down to 5.5. So I don't even wear the mpg "pants"...

Both numbers pretty pathetic, struggling with new tires on 17" rims. Oh, and the block heater had given up the ghost, about a month back.

 

Yeah, that tire pressure is way too low for minimizing tire wear.... Unless of course you drive on really rough roads regularly... Up above 45psi for their entire lifespan my last set of ecopia's wore perfectly evenly, despite not being rotated often enough and I got an additional 10K miles above the amount of miles the tires were warrantied for. That's my experience at least. But most of my miles are highway miles...

 

45 psi? geeeeezzzzz. It feels as if my suspension is made of bricks when I'm at 42 and 40. My eyeballs would probably pop out if I went higher. (but I may try it anyway...)

 

That doesn't make sense. What I describe is indicative of over-inflation. I don't know what the rules are in the US, but here tires are measured at the lowest point across the width and something like 75% of the circumference. If the tires measure 1.5 mm or less, they fail. We have inspections here also, so you can't get away from having worn tires. Air pressure affects the way tires wear, but both under and over inflation will mean we have to throw out a tire that has adequate tread on only either the centers or the edges due to over-inflation or under-inflation.

I don't know how what you describe works for you, but going higher in pressure for me just makes it worse, as in the centers wear down even faster.

Maybe the air pressure works differently in the southern hemisphere, although given the number of kilometers of chip sealed state highway roads, it wouldn't surprise me to learn the composition of tires here are different in some way to those in the USA.

 

Maybe it's driving style? Whatever it is, I know what works for me!