Took my 08 R52 into the dealer for it's first scheduled maintenance yesterday. Had a small punch list of items to complete but among those was an abnormal tire wear on all four tires. I am running Pirelli RFTs. Both rear tires show abnormal wear on the inside threads and the front show slight rounding on the outside threads. The SA immediately says it is an alignment issue, but he will check. The car tracks straight when I take my hands off the steering wheel and I feel no vibration on the steering wheel. Now I have another car in the family that has over 60k miles, using the same roads, the vehicle tracks straight, and I am still on the original Good years with no abnormal wear patterns. I just have a hard time believing that a car with just over 10K has such a tire wear issues. Ironically, I have not heard from the SA and it has been over 24 hours, so perhaps it is more than just an alignment. I suspect the longer the have the MINI, the more serious the issue may be????? The other issues on the punch list were rather easy to fix/check.

Also, I happened to glance at the crt screen after the key reader reported and saw red print that said CONFIDENTIAL INFO. When I asked the SA what that meant, he said it was for internal purposes. Is it normal to have red lettering for a client's account? This was my first visit the the service desk.

 

It is an alignment issue but not abnormal. Mid ground for camber spec up front is negative .5 degrees (next to nothing) and cannot be adjusted on your vehicle, during cornering the outside edge of the outside tire rolls over and becomes a part of the contact patch, so wear increases on the outer edge, camber spec for the rear is ~ negative 1.5 degrees, so the inside edge of the tire is in contact with the road the majority of the time thereby increasing inside tire wear. This is why most of us rotate our tires in deference to OEM’s non-recommendation. You have a couple choices, reduce rear camber as much as factory equipment allows and rotate the tires at 3.5k-mile intervals. Or, increase negative camber up front via aftermarket camber plates and increase adjustability for the rears with aftermarket adjustable lower control arms, plus rotate the tires at around 4k-mile intervals.

There is also a slight chance the shipping shims on the struts have never been removed.

Your other vehicle may be a rear wheel drive or have less rear camber from the factory and/or you may not drive it with the same verve as the MINI.

 

I agree the agressive rear camber with the factory toe in will wear rear tires. I wouldn't recommend changing the rear camber to the minimum though, as this makes the car rather twitchy. If you get the rear camber down to 1-1.2 deg. this should help. There is a pin in the top of the strut mounts on the front of the 08's and should net you about .3 more neg camber up front. But K-huevo is right your biggest issue is lack of rotation most likely.

 

The red on the check in is nothing to worry about. That is on all of the key reader printouts. It is only for internal purpose.

 

OEM recommended toe settings don't wear tires, but toe out will.
Minimum rear camber using the OE adjustment is not less than -1 degree (usually) and as long as rear toe is around .2 degrees in (OEM recommendation), it won't be "twitchy".
The R52 does not have the nylon pin of the R56 variants.

If you adjust camber it will affect toe, so an alignment is called for if you plan to go that route.

 

I forgot the 08 convertable is not the new model and doesn't have the pin in the upper mounts. I was refering to the camber change possible in the rear of the car, not in the min/max allowable factory specs. Changing the rear camber to the minimum which is what you had mentioned would get you to about .4 negative in the rear. This responds well on the race course but tends to make intown movements rather rapid. I've had the rear camber all over the place and the most planted and stable setting is the stock range.We've alwas run an 1/8th of total toe out and have never seen a tire wear issue of any kind, but the tires get rotated often. It sounds like you know as well as I that the real issue is the lack of rotation, no matter what your settings, you leave a tire on the rear of a front wheel drive long enough and it'll wear the inside eges.

 

Thanks for the input. I will rotating on a regular basis. Got the MINI back today and while the dealer did not do an alignment, they did say it is a normal wear pattern. Only MINI I have seen with my type of wear, but now I have it documented.

 

I have a 2005 S conv. we have noticed excessive ware on the inside of the rear tires. I just replaced one with less than 10,000 miles on it. I had it at the dealer less than a month ago and they told me they did a rear end alignment on it, but looking at the rear of the car it seems to be riding on the inside of the tires and the outside is not touching. this is an expensive problem I have spent 1200.00 on tire this year and it hurts.