One of the reasons I bought the Continental DWS was the high treadwear rating, and the supposed 50k mile warranty. My last set of rear tires only lasted about 9,000 miles, and at that time, Discount Tire replaced them as "defective" since they agreed the tires should last much longer than that. Well here I am at 13k miles and the rears are shot again -- down to the wear bars pretty much across the whole tread. The fronts are still good though. Another reason I bought these were that since they are non-directional, I could at least swap them side-to-side for rotation. I'm now being told by the tire shop that the warranty does not apply to staggered setup. WTF?! No one told me this when I bought the tires -- in fact the sales invoice has the warranty typed out. I also did not find anything on Continental's website or in the tire warranty regarding any exclusion of staggered tires. Am I being taken for a ride here?

 

Does not sound right. I know the E60's with the sport package are hard on the rear tires with the aggressive camber setup. My tires (General GMAX-03) have about 2 1/2 years on them (rought 30K) and are still pretty new. The inner tread is wearing a lot faster than the rest of the tires but the tread is good. 9-13K on tires does not sound right. Do you drive aggressively? Heavy foot off the line?

 

I've been told in general that BMW's are hard on the rear tires due to the factory camber & toe settings; however, I had my car aligned to be less aggressive before I even put the new set of tires on. I trust that the shop where I had it aligned did as best as they could with the factory suspension components. In this case, there is a little more tread depth on the outer-most groove, but not by much.

I do not drive the car hard, don't peel out or stomp on the pedal. The car is driven about 2-3 days per week (50/50 mix of highway and city roads), so over the last 2 years I only put on about 13k miles.

I would expect this type of mileage on a sticky UHP summer tire with low tread wear rating, but this is a freakin all-season tire with one of the highest tread wear available in 19"!

 

i am on my third set of rear tires from 50K miles to currently at 111K. I have been rotating the rears by flipping on the wheel and putting them on the other side around 12,000 miles of wear. The First set was Yokohama SDrive and I got 24,000 miles, The next set was the Bridgestone 960 AS and I got 24,000 miles with rotation. I am about to rotate this third set , also Bridgestone 960 AS, at 14,000 miles as they seem to have lasted a little longer. 2008 550 M sport

 

Sounds like you have gotten better results with your tires. The SDrive is a UHP summer tire, and though a different manufacturer, has a lower tread wear than the DWS...still sounds like you get a fair amount of mileage. I would think the Bridgestones you have would be comparable to DWS. I do not expect the DWS to ever reach the advertised 50k miles, but is 20k - 30k reasonable to ask? Getting only 9k-13k is crazy.

 

The tread wear rating is only for camparison within a brand and is self regulated.

 

yes i'm aware of that. i figure it couldn't be an exact apples-to-apples comparison across different tire brands, but i would think it's somewhat close. can't imagine that a 500UTQ rating with one manufacturer would be comparable to a 280UTQ.

 

Update on the situation...

I talked to Continental Tires USA customer support, who confirmed that for staggered fitment, the rear tires are warranty at half the mileage (ie 25,000 miles vs 50,000 miles). I was told that I should be getting 50% off the price of a set of new rear DWS tires. So basically, the tire store was full of shit when they told me that the rears aren't warrantied at all.

 

I hope you get warranty!