Is it normal to have slight negative camber on the rear on these vehicles ?? I noticed it on my wifes 07 Mini Cooper yesterday.

 

When I first bought my MCS I was asking the same questions and didn't believe the people telling me there all like that, I check every Cooper on the lot and all were the same.

MINI/BMW cars all have the camber in the rear set negative. While it's looks funny there's actually a reason, much better handling in turns and provides maximum tire tread to the pavement. The more negative camber the better the conering, front wheels also benifit but wear out much faster.

It you like going fast around corners may I suggest a beefy rear say bar with three different setting, I can go around your typical street lights at 40 mph with little body roll.

 

I figured it may have been normal. Just never really noticed it till I had it in the garage. I've seen other BMW's with this as well and knew they were like that. Just wasn't sure about the R56

 

Handling is the reason for negative camber as 'his lordship' states. One disadvantage still exists. Because the negative camber causes uneven tread wear it is necessary to rotate the tires regularly. 5000 miles is the most popular interval. It will extend the tread life.

 

MINI/BMW advise against rotating the tires, also the Bentley Manual says the same. There are some members that do rotate their tires, in my opinion the rear tires wear differently than the front and when you rotate your tires you're now driving with tires up front that don't have the the same traction as they did before you put the fronts in the rears. I rather follow both the Bentley Manual and BMW suggest. What you do is up to you.

 

The manual is more of a "guideline". They also suggest an oil change interval that is unlike I have ever encountered. Some of their verbage I follow, some I do not.

 

Everybody MINI owner I know of rotates their tires. Granted most are directional so you can only go front to back and NOT left to right. ( I do flip my tires over on the rim so I can then go right to left and then use the other side of the tire ) So lot of people end up with tires wearing out the inside before the rest of the tire even doing rotations. This is also why a lot of people buy the parts necessary to get a non spec alignment to help with the tire wear and or for better handling... Still comes down to how you drive and it and the roads you drive on.. DO mostly highway driving you'll wear the insides, do a lot of weekend twisties and you'd get more even tire wear if your rotating the tires to let the fronts get worn on the outside some from the turns.

 

Yes the MINI has a lot of rear neg camber and it eats through tires. We recommend to all our customers they rotate their tires every 5k miles. On my personal car as soon as I bought it I added the rear hsport camber links to reduce the camber in the rear so my tires would last longer and I could get the alignment the way I wanted. Rotate them, it will only help.

 

Setting the rear toe to 0 is one way to curb inner tire wear, but negative camber hardly wear tires quickly with a quality tire, camber does wear the tire but in the long term.

 

What do you consider long term? Life of tire? which will be shorter then it could be if you don't fix the rear camber..

 

If you were to install say Michelin Super Sports (I have them) and set rear toe to 0 and camber at -1.8 camber by the time your rear tires need replacing you will notice a little more tread on the outside of the tires, it's not a huge difference. As you will read in the link provided less camber less negative camber (until the tire is perpendicular to the road at zero camber) typically will reduce the cornering ability, but results in more even wear. It's a balancing act and depends on how you drive, corning and straightaways. If you have less negative camber and like sharp cornering you will wear the outside of the tire. You must decide camber settings according to how you drive, I love cornering ability at low and high speeds.

There are some tires that wear worde than other brands, especially run flats!

Tire Tech Information

 

Zero toe can make that end of the car a little more prone to wandering. Slight changes in the surface, or compliance in the suspension bushings, can cause the wheels to track a little one way or the other. For that reason, I (generically) prefer a little bit of toe-in measured statically.

 

The toe wouldn't have anything to do with our Mini's front wheels wondering when there's openings or cracks in the road? I have notice tire high tire pressure can make it worse. I prefer 35-36 psi in my Super Sport tires.

 

The front and rear tires do wear a bit differently. When driven aggressively, fronts tend to wear on the outside (not enough negative camber), and rears on the inside. Been that way with all stock FWD and RWD cars I've ever owned. If you've kept the tires on the axle for 5+K miles, drive with a tad more caution for first few hundred miles after rotating to allow the tires to wear into the new pattern. That usually does it.

But more importantly, on all cars, driven wheels (fronts on FWD cars) wear at a much higher rate. So your choice is between rotating, or replacing the fronts at out of sequence, which may result in having different tire brands/models front/back, or buying new sets of front axle tires when you really wish you were upgrading to a better set of tires instead. If you baby your ride, then the old make of the tire will likely no longer be available on the market when you decide to replace it one axle at a time.

For those of us who autoX the cars, rotating the tires is a must, else you wont survive a season on one set of tires. And next season there is always a better/hotter tire available.

I always rotate tires on all my cars, for the reasons stated above, even on the mini van !

a