The inside of my rear tires are really worn. It's like I have mad camber. I bought the car used and have had it almost 2 months. What could be the cause? It's only the rear.

 

Who knows really, those could of been on the front recently. Worn suspension components, bad alignment, someone modified the suspension w/out an alignment afterwards.

 

Should I get an alignment with these worn tires or replace them first?

 

That is normal if it is even wear. There is negative camber set on the rear suspension. You need to program a tire rotation every 5,000 miles into your regular maintenance schedule. If there is cupping or feathering however then you have an alignment situation. Any alignment shop or tire center can take care of all that for you. Directional tires are rotated front to back, same side only. Non direction tires are rotated front straight back, rear crossed to the front. You will find a lot more information on all aspects of being a MINI driver by using the search engine at the top of the screen.

 

As Fly'n Brick stated, this is normal on the rear especially if the tires were not rotated.
If the car has been lowered that will increase the negative camber and thus increase the wear on the inside. Also if the rear toe is off that will increase the wear because the inside edge scrapes across the road.

 

Thanks guys. I'm not sure if the car has been lowered, I'm thinking no. I'd guess the rear toe is off because the wear seams like a lot. Im going to have it checked out this week.

 

Some alignment shops will not adjust the rear toe on Minis because they say they need a special BMW tool but they do not need the tool. However, without the tool the rear toe adjustment takes a little work and patience. They have to loosen the bolts, adjust, tighten the bolts, and the adjustment moves a little when the bolts are tightened so they have to repeat the process until they get it correct. Ask the shop before they start the alignment/adjustment to verify that they will adjust the rear toe. I would also ask them to set the rear toe near zero.

The rear camber is also slightly adjustable on your 2006. Ask that the rear camber be set to around -1.0 degree.

The OEM alignment specs are pretty wide so that it why it is good to specify a goal.

 

Something I forgot to mention earlier: A website every rookie MINI person should have that is packed with URLs to about everything MINI you can think of all in one place including almost every independent MINI shop in the country.

http://soopercooperinfo.com/

 

I agree with all the above, and something I do on top of all that is once my tires get worn just over half way on the inside I have them flipped over on the same wheel so I then can rotate them right to left. The inside of tire becomes the outside so it last much longer then just wearing out the inside and replacing them.. Also I run alittle higher pressure at times say on long HWY trips etc, to work on the middle section..
I have adjustable front and rear suspension with -2.0 Front and -1.2 Rear on my daily driver roughly 18,000 mile a year and get much better mileage out of my tires following that then I did in the beginning of just front to back rotations..

 

I'm going in Friday to have everything looked over.

Fly'n Brick, thanks for the link. It will be used a lot.

quikmni, the shop I'm going to does check the rear toe.

n2mini, thanks for the tip on rotating. I will definitely do that.