I have a question which I was hoping that someone on here (maybe Tony WIM) might be able to answer.

Seeing as how a lot of IS's are affected by the dreaded early inner tyre wear, I was wondering if this could in part be related to tyre type?

I personally get around 30k+ from a set of tyres, and although the front inners do wear a bit quicker than the rest, that sort of mileage is acceptable. I have always had on Dunlops SP9000 Sport Lexus version tyres which were an OE fit tyre.

So, I am wondering, how many people have experienced rapid inner tyre wear when using OE tyres and if its not as many, then could the inner tyre wear be in part down to the use of non OE tyres that were no developed for the IS chassis setup?

How would a less stiff tyre wall and possible non correction of the IS chassis setup to naturally drift slightly to the left affect the wear of tyres which haven't been developed for the IS?

Just a thought as trying to pick the right replacement tyres for my car and although I know lots of people have commented on WIMs new alignment settings, I have never had a problem with the standard Lexus settings, so would be more than annoyed if changed the settings and got worse performance/lifespan!

Therefore, got to thinking that maybe those who see the best benefit are when you use non OE spec/developed tyres with WIMs new settings.

What do you mean by the chassis's natural tendency to drift left?

I don't think it can make much of a difference though, especially as Lexus themselves had two OEM tyres for the IS200. I think the key is that you need to stick to XL tyres, but other than that I can't imagine there's a huge difference.......

Interested to know what Tony and others think

According to Dunlop, the IS200 has a natural tendancy to pull to the left. The design of the lexus version of the SP9000 Sport (as well as having different compound and stiffer sidewall) was to correct this a bit.

Apparently the SP3000 is similar in this respect but used the Avensis as a development platform.

Now, I dunno exactly how true this is, but have no reason to question the Dunlop tech guy, especially as they no longer have a direct replacement tyre for the SP9000 Lexus.

I thought I would pose the question though, especially to see what experts such as Tony thought. What is the real effect of going away from OE tyres, does it matter in any way or what??

Most, if not all tyres in the Lexus size are XL (extra load) so suitable to cope with the cars weight, actual grip levels between them is another matter. Resilience toward the chassis settings or not would apply to all makes of tyre.