Medic_is350

Your alignment problem is not alignment problem all the problems your having is your slide pins on our calipers are sticking or seized. Trust me on this I had all same problems as you and dealer could not find problem. I found problem and replaced caliper and sued Lexus Corp. and WON!!

In my experience, cupping is NOT just a suspension component issue. I've had multiple sets of front tires on my trucks start to cup after 7K or 10K miles. In that case, the cupping is caused by the tread lugs. The spacing between the lugs allows them to "squirm". That condition of tread wear apears to be fairly normal for larger lug truck type tires. And yes, the suspension system and wheel alignment were fine and the tires were religiously rotated and rebalanced every 7K miles. I am anal about vibrations. If the IS250 does not have a camber adjustment, then perhaps the design is bad. Does that mean that the Toyota engineers figured out that there wont' be a problem with wheel alignment, and that camber adjustments to their genuis suspension design won't be necessary? No camber adjust is fairly common on newer front wheel drive cars, but I find it interesting that the rear wheel drive IS250 does not. Please explain what you mean by "but if its feathering then the tire pros should be able to dial that in as well as any dealer, provided they are good also". How does a tire pro shop "dial in" a feathered tire? Tire feathering is from a bad toe in/out setting. easily adjusted on the rack when they are doing the alignment. There a millions and millions of tires put on vehicles that work perfectly normal that never see a "road force balancer". What does rotating a tire on its wheel 180 degrees do? "For most consumers, it's not a big deal to them, so alot of tire shops get away with this. Frequently. I only do business with tire shops that do road force balancing. It's more work for them, as they have to mount the tire, spin it up and measure it, then in some cases, stop, dismount the tire and rotate it on the rim 180 degrees, then remount it, and balance it from there. But I'm much more involved than most I would venture to guess. " Most consumers.... What's "not a big deal to them"?? The laws of physics are fairly straight forward when it comes to balancing a tire. Although the dynamics are different when the tire is rotating down the road with a load, it's obvious that if a quality, non-defective tire is balanced properly on a typical spin balancer, then 99.99% of the time it's going to work fine on the road. However, I can balance a tire the shape of a football on a spin balancer, but obviously it's not going to be smooth on the road. Bent or out concentric wheels/rims and out of round tires can induce a vibration and cause tire tread to cup, regardless of how tight and perfect the suspension components are. That's MY experience. I have a gut feeling that the multiple post regarding abnormal tire wear issues that have surfaced here, and with my own experience with my wife's IS250, that 1) The choice of factory tires by Lexus was stupid. 2) The suspension system on the car is way too loose or a *BLEEP* poor design. Again, the IS250 as a top brand luxury 4-door sedan at $38,000 US dollars, should NOT have tires that wear out in 10,000 miles!!... camber adjustment or no camber adjustment!! That's just my worthless opinion.