Tire wear after H&R Sport/Bilstein Sports

[Zoso]

So I'm starting to think about getting my 318i running again.  Its been sitting in a garage for the past 7 months while I've been driving a Jetta 1.8T that used to be my wife's.  I need to replace the timing chain, sprockets, guides, etc.


Since the car went out of commission in the winter, it still has the snow tires on it.  While putting the summer tires into a new shed, I saw that the inside edges of the summer tires were toast - no doubt due to negative camber from the H&R Sports / Bilstein Sports that I put in the car a few years ago.

My question for you people with lowered cars is have you fixed this in your car?  What parts do you recommend to remedy this?  The 318i was my daily driver and I used to put a lot of miles on it.  If I am going to fix it up and get it on the road again, I want to make sure that I'm not going through a set of tires every 15K miles!

I've seen kits on Ireland Engineer for the front and rear.  Anyone have any experience with these?  They're pricey!

Also, does anyone have an idea of how many degrees of negative camber is added when you use H&R Sports / Bilstein Sports?

[Febi Guibo]

hullo Mike, god of write-ups!

I will measure for you, but, uh, how should I do that?

[christophbmw]

this is the #1 reason why i dont want to lower my car.

as for  a fix: accelerate harder in turns and you will get even tire wear at the rear just joking. Ireland Engineering sells a kit for the rear (it might just be for toe adjustment though). Also it depends on your driving (duh), my car is perfectly aligned (i aligned it on a profesional alignment rack) and i go through tires about every 20K. I am a broke college student so i try really hard not to drive the car hard, but its so hard! the 318is just begs to be thrown around :rolleyes:.

hope this helps, you could also modify the rear traling arms, but that would be difficult.

[Zoso]

Also, are there kits for the rear that don't require welding to install?

[Zoso]

hullo Mike, god of write-ups!

I will measure for you, but, uh, how should I do that?

Do you have a plum bob and a bit protractor?  




Actually I was hoping that the amount of negative caster added with H&R Sports was something that was documented but I couldn't find.  

[Zoso]

this is the #1 reason why i dont want to lower my car.

as for  a fix: accelerate harder in turns and you will get even tire wear at the rear just joking. Ireland Engineering sells a kit for the rear (it might just be for toe adjustment though). Also it depends on your driving (duh), my car is perfectly aligned (i aligned it on a profesional alignment rack) and i go through tires about every 20K. I am a broke college student so i try really hard not to drive the car hard, but its so hard! the 318is just begs to be thrown around :rolleyes:.

hope this helps, you could also modify the rear traling arms, but that would be difficult.

Since the E30 was my daily driver - if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have put in the lowered suspension.

[e9nine]

Hmm - if all the suspension bits are up to date, just rotate the tires.

I have run all sorts of -ve camber and never had issue with tire wear once I rotated them regularly.

[Zoso]

Hmm - if all the suspension bits are up to date, just rotate the tires.

I have run all sorts of -ve camber and never had issue with tire wear once I rotated them regularly.

I don't think this would help me.  The inside of the tire and rim is the inside regardless of what corner of the car it is on and I believe it is happening on all four corners.

I also think that my tires are unidirectional... so I can only go from front to back/back to front ... not side to side.

[e9nine]

What are your alignment settings. That doesn't seem normal.

I run a very aggressive set up on my 318iS with -ve 3.8 degrees camber infront (I can dig up one of my spec sheets) and have never experienced such issues. Even when I had staggered wheels I couldn't rotate the wear was rather good surprisingly with all the daily driving I did.

[n2motorsports]

you toe adjustment could be off, toe will wear out a tire much faster than camber.

[tjts1]

you toe adjustment could be off, toe will wear out a tire much faster than camber.

+1
Toe out will wear the inside of the front tires in no time. Try measuring toe and camber. Its easy.
http://www.pelicanparts.com/bmw/techarticles/Borrowed/home_toe_in.htm
For toe I used a couple of 1x2" by 24" pieces of wood with spacers underneath. You can get really accurate measurements with this method.

[D. Clay]

http://www.e30m3performance.com has camber and toe charts in degrees and inches for rear suspension travel.

[monko141]

What I did was order two sets of offset trailing arm bushings from bimmerworld and installed them in opposing directions.  The outer ones are supposed to be used to adjust the toe angle but I felt it was more important to correct the camber since I installed stage 3 springs.  I do not know how much negative camber I took out since I installed every thing at one time.  I also installed an extra set of spring pads which also reduced the negative camber.  For the front I installed Ireland Street/Track camber plates which can be dialed in to whatever degree you desire.  They are the least expensive that I have found and work very well.

[Zoso]

you toe adjustment could be off, toe will wear out a tire much faster than camber.

I'll check it out.  Now that I think about it - I'm not sure if I ever had an alignment after I replaced the springs and shock inserts.  I know that I did it when I replaced the control arms, CABs, and tie rods ends.

[teh Phil]

I don't think this would help me.  The inside of the tire and rim is the inside regardless of what corner of the car it is on and I believe it is happening on all four corners.

I also think that my tires are unidirectional... so I can only go from front to back/back to front ... not side to side.

If you dismount the tires and swap them across the axle the insides become the outsides. My buddy used to do this every so often in his spec miata to maintain even wear, and get the most out of his tires.