It seems that Honda is replacing or prorating tires of the axle affected by the control arms. That seems fair. The other axle is unaffected, and therefore there is no adjustment for those tires. I don't see a problem with that.

 

I was fortunate enough to have someone who understood my complaint at American Honda to replace the two defective tires. I am not sure of the mileage limits, but you might contact American Honda and voice your concerns as I did.

 

If you rotate your tires, this defect is hosing them all, not just the 2 on the rear at the time they own up to the control-arm replacement. I'm with Jess here - Honda is not doing the right thing by its customers. Other auto manufacturers are similar, though. It's cheaper for them if you never find out about the control-arm issue (or any TSB, for that matter), and it's cheaper still for Honda to have this weak-a55ed tire-proration policy.
Still love the car, but I'm not so impressed with Honda decisions on how to treat their people. If you're "in the know" you are usually treated OK. Otherwise (meaning most people) you get hosed by these policies. TSBs are an automaker's dirty little secret. In theory, if you use the dealership for your service, they'll take care of all these TSB's if you need them. But that is simply not true. Unless you know enough to bring an issue up, they are not "looking out for you". I think at one time in past history, maybe they were looking out for us. And you really shouldn't have to use the dealership for service to get bugs fixed on your car anyway (at least not semi-important ones, like this one). But all the manufacturers do it. Oh well.

 

Very good point; thanks for bringing it up for consideration!

 

I totally agree with you Steve,well said! Honda had better clean-up their ways or it may hurt them in the end? Hal

 

I agree, tire rotation is going to evenly distribute any damage to all 4 tires. Also, replacing just 2 tires, when the other two are moderately worn, is going to cause hassles down the road, making it difficult to continue to rotate them, and messing up future tire purchases.

We have an '06, haven't done anything to the rear suspension, and as far as I can see the tire wear is normal and uniform. They are getting a little noisy, I think, compared to new. I'm not meaning to dismiss others experience, this is just what's happened with us. Maybe the original rear upper arms vary?

Our odometer's around 68,000km and the OEM Bridgestone Insignia have 5~6/32" tread left. They've been on the whole time except for maybe 3000km last winter when we got separate snow's.

Addendum: The possible increase in rear tire noise might be due to the wheel well undercoat flaking off. I've been washing the rear wheel wells dilligently, and haven't put any fresh undercoating in there. My understanding is that undercoating is pretty useless for rust prevention, and is actually detrimental once it's loose and flaking.

 

We had the rear arms replaced on my Wife's '07. I inquired with the dealer to replace them, and they refused to replace them, I called honda, they called the dealer, and the dealer replaced them. They wouldn't replace the tires because they hadn't been rotated, but we didnt care because we where replacing the rims anyway. The rear is noticable cambered less, and the sound from the rear quieted down a lot to almost non existant. With the new rims and tires there is no noise whatsoever from the rear.

 

Just had my arms done last week. The dealer made a big point of telling me they had to eat the cost of the work, that Honda would not reimburse them. Sure doesn't sound like what everyone else has experienced.

BTW, in my case, I did have abnormal wear on my rears and even took the car to be aligned once the problem appeared. Now that I think about it, I wonder how the alignment shop did the '4-wheel alignment' I paid for if the camber was out of specification and couldn't be corrected?

 

The rear wheel camber spec. is "-1 deg, 39 minutes"

Which translates to a pitch of 3/16" in 12", fwiw

This is fixed and unadjustable, as far as I know. When the rear wheel upper control arms are replaced, I gather this changes the camber, deviating from spec.

I've not had these control arms exchanged, I believe I have the original. Looking at the vehicle from the rear, the back wheels look to be slightly splayed out at the bottom. Our tire wear apears uniform around the diameter, ie: no intermittent cupping.

The tread does look slightly shallower on the inner edge, but I can't remember a car we've had where that wasn't the case.

 

Had ours done last week up here in Canada on our work staff vehicle. The car only had 20,000 km on it but both the front and rear tires were severely hosed by cupping (the tires were rotated by the dealer at 10,000 km). We had to pay for two of them. The silence with the new tires is amazing, though there is still the usual road roar. I hope it lasts......

The car is a 2008 HCHII, delivered in December 2007.