This is what my stock front Potenzas look like after 35,000 miles of wear. They are the original tires on the car. The stock rears were replaced 10,000 miles ago.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36861522@N03/4780445132/

Looking at the inside tire wear on these, do you think dismounting them and moving them side to side is worth it, or should I just get replacements now? I live in NJ and wet roads occur frequently. Eventually I am going to go with the Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec, but is there any life left in these?

 

Dismounting and remounting them the other way is not even remotely close to worth it. Get new tires. You might modify your alignment settings to reduce negative camber if the wear is on the inside, or increase it if the wear is on the outside.

 

People that do decide to dismount and switch side to side, when do they typically do so to maximize tread life? These look too far gone for that, huh?

 

35k is a miracle replace them

 

wow and they still look like in secent shape...sell them on CL or ebay, youll get atleast 35-40 bucks each...

 

those are pretty toast.. just replace em.

 

Yeah at that point I'd just replace them. Next time as soon as your inside tread gets to about 50% gone then flip them to the outside. I've found this is the best way to get the absolutely maximum out of your tires especially if you are running any kind of performance alignment and daily the car like I do.

 

Not worth doing at 50%, either. There's only about 1/32 of wear on the "good" portion of those tires.

Much cheaper/easier/less hassle to just replace them and not bother with the inside/out dismount/remount.

 

^I disagree on that one. I did that on my last set of tires when they got to around 50% tread and it most definitely helped them last longer. By the time the tires were bald they had completely even wear across them. Now if this was a track car and the tires weren't daily driven on then I'd just say don't bother flipping them but on a daily it definitely helps.

 

Of course they'll be closer to evenly-worn at the end of life if you dismount/remount at half-life. The question is whether the gain in life (minimal) is worth the cost (time/money/hassle).

Figure dismounting/remounting/rebalancing is going to run you ~$80, and you have to set aside time to get it done.

If you do have asymmetric wear amounting to the insides being to the wear indicators (2/32 tread depth remaining) with the outside still at 4/32, how much will swapping the tires out have saved you? If you'd dismounted/remounted inside-out at tire half-life, at the same mileage as the asymmetric case being at 2/32 - 4/32, you should be at 3/32 tread depth all the way across, so another 1/32 to the wear indicators. Since usable tread depth is 8/32 (10/32 total minus 2/32 minimum at treadwear indicators), you will have extended tire life by a factor of 8/7 or +14%.

Not insignificant, but it has cost you $80 plus (the biggie for me) time/hassle (if you do this, you're having to go to the tire shop nearly twice as often).

Unless you have *major* asymmetric wear, IMO it's not going to be worth it. And if you do have major asymmetric wear, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get an alignment...