Tyre Wear

[Badger61]

How does your Panda compare?

[Quacker]

Originally Posted by Badger61

How does your Panda compare?

I'll take that as being a serious question and will answer in the same way. Actually the build quality of the Polish built car is excellent. Like the Audi it has just crossed 20,000 miles and it has not had a single fault. The Audi has a rubbing top tailgate, had a failed bluetooth module and costs more in tyres per mile than the diesel Panda does in fuel. It averages over 60mpg with 70 mpg possible on a tidy trip while the Audi averages 27 with 32 possible.

The front wheels toe out slightly but I haven't bothered to get it tracked. The first set of front tyres lasted only 15000 miles but the pair costed about a third of the cost of a single Audi tyre. The rear tyres look like lasting well over 50,000 miles.

The common rail four cylinder 1300cc engine is a gem as is the gearbox. It goes like a bat out of hell.

You may have noticed from my few posts that the majority of new cars that I have bought in the last ten years have had wheel alignment problems from the factory. Indeed out of over a dozen or more new cars I can recall only three have had no alignment problems and they were/are the Jaguar XK8, the 04 Range Rover and the 07 Ford Ranger diesel pick-up truck.

[mnk303]

Originally Posted by Quacker

I've read how a few here find the Q7's tyre wear rate to be acceptable and frankly I am astonished. This is not a two wheel drive powerful car wearing its drive tyres out. This is a big Quattro and my diesel is not that powerful. Not significantly more powerful and certainly driven no differently from my previous Range Rover TD6 or Mercedes ML270 I had before that. My current daily drive is a Land Cruiser Amazon.
All these vehicles except the Audi have managed in excess of 30,000 miles on a set of tyres, the RR and Amazon averaged 35000 miles.

The Audi Q7 has now worn TWO sets of tyres out in 21,000 miles. Evenly. With mainly my wife driving rather sedately.
It costs me £750 per year plus VAT just in tyres to run this vehicle. That's 5p per mile in rubber and rising.

This is unacceptable and untenable. It is NOT normal wear. It IS a problem with the design.

FYI the first set were Conti's while the second are Michelin something-or-other Rosso.

I wish Audi would resolve this issue by changing some component or other because this thing will be down the road in another 5000 or so miles for another Range Rover or a Mercedes GL or Land Cruiser Amazon otherwise.

Forget the 'performance' and 'weight' excuse. I wasn't born yesterday and am not naive any more than the chap with the haulage business earlier in this thread. We both probably know more about heavy vehicles and tyre wear than most of the apologists for high running costs here.

Excuse the rant for a first post. It may be my first post 'here' but its certainly not my first post.

May I suggest that not all owers are "thick users" of Q7's , I certainly run other expensive cars, like Ferraris, Astons and Jags and sadly they also wear out tyres in less than 10K miles. I agree it would be nice if they lasted longer, but and its only a "but" I have not seen any LR or Toyotas with such low profile tyres as the Q7, mine are at 8K now and I have just looked,they show every sign of lasting another 7-8K, so I am "okish with that". What no one here has stated yet is what they think is incorrect in the desigh of the Q7..... So if all you readers out there no about cars say what the issue is with the Tyre wear, it cant be so bad if the Q7 is one of the best selling large 4 x4's ever made (in such a short time).

I must also state that in my honest opinion my local Audi dealer has fallen over backwards to assist me, I looked at the LR and RR and for the same cost as I paid for a New Q7 which was £47K I could not buy the equvelent RR (which did not have 7 seats), and the LR top model would cost more as well.

[Sportingmac]

Well said Badger - I am with you on all points. Range Rover and Land Rover do well on their tyres too - so my conclusion is that this is an Audi technical problem and not just a driver or vehicle weight problem.

Come on Audi - sort it.

[Quacker]

Originally Posted by mnk303

May I suggest that not all owers are "thick users" of Q7's , I certainly run other expensive cars, like Ferraris, Astons and Jags and sadly they also wear out tyres in less than 10K miles. I agree it would be nice if they lasted longer, but and its only a "but" I have not seen any LR or Toyotas with such low profile tyres as the Q7, mine are at 8K now and I have just looked,they show every sign of lasting another 7-8K, so I am "okish with that". What no one here has stated yet is what they think is incorrect in the desigh of the Q7..... So if all you readers out there no about cars say what the issue is with the Tyre wear, it cant be so bad if the Q7 is one of the best selling large 4 x4's ever made (in such a short time).

Firstly my diesel Q7 is an SUV not a sports car and it is not driven hard or like a sports car. Secondly it wears all four tyres out in not much more than 10,000 miles even though the alignment is correct and the power is split between all four wheels. Thirdly I have owned and run an XK8 so I know how long the Pirreli tyres last. Fourthly the 255/65r18 tyres fitted to my Q7 are about the same size and profile as fitted to Range Rover which had tyres last over three times as long and had a full time four wheel drive system and size, weight and performance comparable to the Q7.

As for the text highlighted in red, well don't you think that as people get to know that the tyres are such a high wear item they will shy away from the cars both new and used? It costs me £550 + VAT every 10,000 miles to shoe this thing. If it were not for the fact that I get the VAT back it would cost 15p in tyres alone to go to the village and back, a round trip of less than two miles. It costs 18p per mile in fuel and nearly 3p in road tax. But the other costs are comparable with other similar vehicles while the tyres cost over THREE TIMES what it cost to run the Range Rover or 200hp 2.8 ton Land Cruiser.

I must also state that in my honest opinion my local Audi dealer has fallen over backwards to assist me, I looked at the LR and RR and for the same cost as I paid for a New Q7 which was £47K I could not buy the equvelent RR (which did not have 7 seats), and the LR top model would cost more as well.

Yes it is a slightly cheaper car than the latest Range Rover but it does not have the ultimate versatility, third row child seats excepted.
However the tyre wear is unacceptable to most first owners and will be sure to devalue the cars to a huge extent as they get older.
Its not a matter of being able to 'afford' this expenditure on rubber, it is the pure waste of money, rescources and, not least, time spent on rubber. It is just not acceptable and as owners we will soon see the evil of huge devaluation of the cars as a result unless Audi address this issue.
The dealers can fall over backwards and do triple somersaults but unless the issue is sorted they are wasting their energy.

[Goodmove]

Just thought I should let you know that after some active tyre management by my local tyre people I have just replaced the Original Goodyears on my S-Line at 18,343 miles. Wear rates are definately acceptable to me as they are fairly soft tyres.

[Quacker]

Originally Posted by Goodmove

Just thought I should let you know that after some active tyre management by my local tyre people I have just replaced the Original Goodyears on my S-Line at 18,343 miles. Wear rates are definately acceptable to me as they are fairly soft tyres.

Then either the GY tyres generally wear better or you do a lot of motorway driving or a bit of both.
That's still only just over half the mileage I get from Range Rover and Land Cruiser [the big one] but congratulations on getting 80% more milage than [my wife mainly] manages on our Q7. Unfortunately I do believe you are at the upper limit of what most people manage on their Q7 tyres. All 4 tyres mind you, not just front or back ones as would be the case with a 2wd car generally.

I am also glad but slightly shocked that you consider the mileage to be acceptable. You obviously find wasting time, money and recources on your car to be acceptable. I, on the other hand, compare it with alternatives I have owned and run and find it completely unacceptable.

[frizz]

My Q7 has just covered 16,000 miles with no tread wear at all on the outside edges, despite the previous owner running the pressures too low (36F 38R) for the first 6,000 miles. I have 295 35 R21's which should be run at 44F 49R and rekon I have another 6,000 miles left in them.
I have met two other Q7 owners who remarked on the excessive tye wear on the outside edges, one of which took his car back to the dealer only to be told, '' that's normal''. I advised him to look at this site.
This has to be something to do with the factory settings (camber or tracking).
I must admit, I did look at the Q7 forums to see if there were any major problems with these cars before commiting to buy and also chose S/hand to ensure I was not buying one with this inherent problem.
On the whole, I am very pleased with the car. I just wish I had looked on the RRS forum Before I bought one last year. Dreadful cars with so many problems, awful customer care and the dealers try to fob their customers off with any excuse but fix it. The Q7 is in a different league altogether.

[Badger61]

Originally Posted by Quacker

Then either the GY tyres generally wear better or you do a lot of motorway driving or a bit of both.
That's still only just over half the mileage I get from Range Rover and Land Cruiser [the big one] but congratulations on getting 80% more milage than [my wife mainly] manages on our Q7. Unfortunately I do believe you are at the upper limit of what most people manage on their Q7 tyres. All 4 tyres mind you, not just front or back ones as would be the case with a 2wd car generally.

I am also glad but slightly shocked that you consider the mileage to be acceptable. You obviously find wasting time, money and recources on your car to be acceptable. I, on the other hand, compare it with alternatives I have owned and run and find it completely unacceptable.

One man's meat is another man's poison

[Quacker]

The Q7 is indeed a very good car. Tyre wear is its major downfall. Mine wore both front and one back out of true from the first set. The geometry was corrected just before replacement of the first set but the second set lasted not much longer at 11,000 miles. This set has worn evenly.

Apart from this major issue the car is brilliant. I like it just as much as the XK8 Jaguar which was just as well built and really full of 'suprise and delight' features. I would keep it long term if the tyre wear issue was resolved. As it is I can see us parting company in the next 18 months, certainly before it reaches 50,000 miles and possibly much sooner, maybe even in another 5000 miles at 25,000 total while its third set of tyres are still sellable. I don't get emotionally attached to cars and I am not brand loyal or snobbish and really don't care what badge I drive but just cannot stand driving something which commits me to buying 40 expensive tyres just to cover 100,000 miles. On principle I will get something more intelligently engineered.