Hi All-
Before I bought my 07 Matrix, I did some research and saw that folks were having a tire wear issue. I spoke with a friend who had an 06; he didn't have tire problems at about 12K, so I was reassured. I thought it must be something in earlier models, or a hit-or-miss sort of condition. I bought my new 07 Matrix (base model, automatic) and am happy with it, and thought no more about the tire wear issues.
Welllll...I got an email from the same friend, he's had it in the dealer shop, dealer says he needs new tires now (he's at 23K miles noe). Odd cupping, tread wear on the insides of the tires, etc. Same old thing.
So I went right out to my car to check--I have 14K on it right now, and I haven't really looked closely at them for a long time, other than to check pressure, etc...like I said, I sort of forgot about the issue. Damned if it doesn't have wear on the outside edges, and nowhere else...ithey've been rotated and balanced every 4K since I got it! I haven't been abusing the thing; just normal, conservative driving. Alignment seems perfect.
Some have seemed to blame the tires--but the tires on my friend's are the Continentals, and mine came with Goodyear Eagle RS-A's. So, I don't think it's the tires, necessarily.
The best idea I've seen is one about the camber adjustments, that makes the most sense to me. The wear indicates too much negative camber, and the Matrix (from what I understand) has a fixed camber setting--it's nonadjustable. The fix for this is to install a camber adjustment bolt kit (pretty cheap, like 15USD a side), which will give the alignment guys more room to get the camber setting right. I think I may get some and go that route to try to save these tires I have. That's what my friend is going to do--he took the thing to his tire guy with the info about the camber adjustment bolts, and the guy thought it sounded right, and he's going to install a pair of them.
If anyone else out there has put the camber adjustment bolt kit on their Matrix, let me know--I'm curious how that went. I can't imagine it's going to do any good talking with the dealer about it; they deny that the car has any issue with the tires, or they say that it's the tires themselves, despite the many complaints I've read on forums. Don't want to waste my time with that...
Thanks for any input about this--sorry for the long post, but it's a tricky issue with lots of details...
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