Should I get an alignment?
 

I noticed the other day that my tires (225/45/R17) wore all the way to the steel belting on the inside shoulders. They were directional tires, so I only rotated front/back. I got roughly 13-15k miles on Kumho MXes. The outside shoulder and rest of the tread had generally some tread (didn't measure but probably about 2-4mm) left, and I had thought I could get another 3-5k miles out of the tires until I noticed the inside shoulder.

I just replaced the Kumhos with Falken 225s. My concern is about the uneven tire wear. I do want an agressive alignment setup for great cornering, but if I need to get an alignment, I will.

What's the verdict?

Sounds like you have too much camber, or you just corner too hard too often.

Take some camber out, you will notice less cornering ability and more tire life. No way to not get around this tradeoff.

Cornering hard frequently will typically take off more material on the outside edge, not the inside.

Yes, you probably need an alignment if for no other reason than to know where it is. There are some options.

First, with directional tires, you can dismount them and run them on the other side of the car evening out wear. Asymetrical tires however are side specific.

Second, while an agressive alignment may sound like what you want, if your old tires didn't show any real wear to the outer shoulders/upper sidewalls, you probably have/had to much camber. I would also check your toe, as toe out may well contribute to innner shoulder wear.

Well, I do corner often and fairly hard. :) No tire squealing, though. Just aggressive mountain cornering.

They are symmetrical. You're suggesting unmounting the tires and swapping sides/directions and remounting? That's about $50-60 to do (almost the price of an alignment), so I'd have to evaluate how much that would really add to the life of the tire. I thought about running them backwards (simply rotating them to the other side), but I've read that will have worse wet performance.

No, definitely get the alignment so you know where you are from now on unless you have the printout from your last one. If you still wear unevenly, you can tell them what to change.

The flipping allows for longer tire wear by using the other side if your alignment or driving style wear them unevenly.

Actually, the one set of tires I ruined prematurely were worn on the inside edges. I *think* that it was caused by excessively undeersteering on backroads with rough pavement, and it was the inside shoulder of the inside front that was taking the most wear. Even when I know I've plowed through a run or two at autocross, it's not really the ouside shoulders that get beat up provided I have enough tire pressure. I think with our strut setup and awful camber curves, the inside tire takes the most abuse if you're not drifiting or something. Or maybe I'm totally on the wrong track and it was just plain camber that killed 2 of my first set of S03s. :shrug:

I did the same thing to my tires. I had sever toe out on the fronts which wore them to the belts in 4000 miles and 4 track days.

If I may chime in, being my own alignment tech, I know exactly where all of the settings are on my car. My camber, as you could imagine, is WAY out of spec, yet I've never seen any excessive wear on the inside edges. Not as you describe anyway. The only time I've seen wear like you suggest is with a TOE problem. Even if the vehicle doesn't pull, you can have a toe probelm, as if the toe were out evenly on both sides, you won't pull, but wear tires like a MO FO.