Other wheel or tire problem on the 2003 Nissan 350Z
2 crashes 2 of the 64 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When other wheel or tire problem gets reported
Owners of the 2003 Nissan 350Z report other wheel or tire problem at a median of 10,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 7,500 miles and a quarter after 12,500 miles, from 46 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 60,000 miles. It is the 2nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 2,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 30,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 27,543 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A window that narrow is the signature of a part that fails on its own schedule rather than on how the car is driven — which is usually a design or supplier problem rather than wear and tear.
93% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,550 miles | 7,000 miles | 8,848 miles | 13,691 miles | 31,093 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a crash is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $200–$1,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 5 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2003, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2007 at 50,000 miles.
By volume the 2003 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
The car has terrible feathering on the inside edges of the front tires. Problem started after 7,500 miles. Contact patches on the inside tire tread are wearing unevenly. I had the car aligned by nissan on 2-21-03 and the problem has gotten worse. This really scares me and could lead to unsafe driving due to poor design and uneven tread on the tires. The car is a nissan 350z. Received in august 2002. *jb
Front tires feathering. Return to dealer. Dealer rotated tires and redid alignment. Was told to go to a frame shop. They say it is so far out of alingment they cant fix. Caused by pot hole? Other z owners have the same problem of feathering.
My 350z had a terrible growl noise and vibrations coming from the front when braking. Tires were very feathered on the inside of the front two tires. Filed a complaint with nna and they had the dealer take the tires off the rims and swap the front tires. I don't think they fixed the issue just delayed the inevitable. *la
Also reported on the 2003 Nissan 350Z
Other suspension problem
Other engine problem
Other powertrain problem
Alignment fault and uneven tire wear
Stalling while driving
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 64 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other wheel or tire problem happen on the 2003 Nissan 350Z?
Across 46 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 7,500 miles and a quarter after 12,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other wheel or tire problem on the 2003 Nissan 350Z?
64 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.5 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed