my tires are being ruined by the negative camber on the rear wheels. the gooey performance tires i have replaced already are cuppping. i have been rotating every 5000 miles. do not drive hard. avoid pot holes the whole ball of wax.
anyone else have this problem? any adjust ments to get the wheels straight up and down? i think it is problematic that mini thinks we all drive track style to work.

 

What suspension mods have you done to the car?

 

im on my 5th set already so i bought upper and lower controll arms to reset the camber after lowering!!! makes a difference!!!

 

NONE. stock set up.

 

i am a novice mechanic. please explain what i can do to adjust

 

Joshua,


Have you had your alignment checked? That would be my first suggestion, have an alignment shop set up the suspension to MINI factory specs. There are adjustment points along the underside of the body.

 

My MCS has stock suspension (well, an RDR rear sway, but that doesn't affect geometry) and has exhibited amazingly even wear on my Falken Azenis. From my experience with VW's I expected cupping, especially in the rear, but luckily no problems like that.

 

I've had really good luck by running higher than normal air pressures. I'm already on my third set of tires. Instead of the 32 psi the book recommends, I run 38 or 40 psi. I get nice even wear. My stock runflats wore pretty close to even across the tread, the Yokohamas AVS 100s wore perfectly flat across the tread (checked with calipers), and my last set of tires (Protenza S03s) have wore more on the edges than in the center, but not by much. I've just bought (last week) brand new AVS 100s again and of course cannot comment on tread wear just yet...

 

OK, let me try this again, as my last post was all messed up --

---

I thought cupping was uneven wear in the middle of the tire. How can negative camber cause cupping ??

BB

 

your toe is probably way out in the rear. since you have stock setup, make sure your toe is in spec...

fwiw:
when you lower a car, negative camber is naturally added. with increase in negative camber, you increase toe-out. extreme camber does not necessarily mean bad tire wear. extreme toe does. we know of cars running -3.5/-2.5 on street with normal tire wear. of course these are dual duty cars seeing lots of track time, so their alignments are checked often.

 

Like Andy, I have stock, with 22mm rear bar. Have experienced no unusual wear either on stock 16" runflats or on 215-15-45 Falken Azenis. Either your pressure is low, wheels/tires imbalanced or toe is out of spec. I believe the stock alignment has essentially no negative or positive camber in rear.

 

i have been told by mini that the rear does in fact have a permanent, in-adjustablecamber. it was explained to me that this causes an excelleration in tire wear on the rears. front wheel drive cars have this drag problem normally, but witht he camber, it is excellerated. all this is per indianapolis mini.
if this is true i do not like mini for doing this to it s customers. burning tires all the time. twice as fast as a normally set up vehicle. if it is not true and dreyer reinbold mini is lying, then i will have a different mission in life.
i just want to fix it.
alignment, done, pressure fine, what else.?
mini s 17 wheels dunlop tires.

 

Joshua, try some aggressive driving (safely of course), do some slaloms in a huge parking lot and see if that evens the tread wear out a bit. I read that a lot of straight line or freeway driving will increase wear on cars with extra camber. Mine has alot of camber because I just lowered it, but even after some awsome runs last weekend thru the backroads theres no feathering of the inner treads at all. I'm running on Goodyear runflats btw., very soft winter tread on the inside of the tire. good luck

 

buy controll arms, small initial investment lots of return and cooler for autocross setup!!!

 

Joshua,

Whoever you spoke to was feeding you a line of bull, maybe unintentially, but a line of bull none the less. I've dealt with D&R for a couple years and there is a range of knowledge levels there, like any shop, but no shortage of hardnosed opinions. There also is a range in customer focus vs. profit maximizing, again like any shop.

The Mini, both Cooper and S, does have some camber built into the suspension, but it is very minimal and not adjustable without adding aftermarket parts. I am currently running about twice as much negative camber as the stock setup and when I've worn a set of tires down past the wear bars and the inner groves are starting to disappear, the difference in tread depth between the inner groove and outer grove is about 1/32 of an inch. That's enough to see but not enough to really impact the point where you will decide to replace a set of tires.

This has been true through several cars, several suspensions setups, and years of driving 100+ miles a day on rural highways.

What WILL destroy a set of tires pretty darn quickly is having too much "toe in" or "toe out". Either way it eats tires. Again, this is experience talking. Inflation pressure can have an impact, but the tires we use have realtively stiff sidewalls compared to years gone by or SUVs. They are pretty forgiving over a range of tire pressures, but you should probably tarket somewhere between 35psi and 40psi. Tire pressue has a bigger impact on ride and handling balance than it does on wear.

I suggest you take your car to another shop and have your toe set to "0" all the way around. What that means is the tires will be pointed directly along the cars direction of travel, which will eliminate scrubbing. It also reduces rolling resistance (see previous comment about scrubbing) and thus has a slight positive impact on fuel economy and a noticable positive impact on tire life. It also makes the car feel pretty good when driven aggressively, just as a bonus. Be aware that the car may be more or less inclined to "wander", or more accurately react to steering inputs from either you or the road, depending on the current toe settings on your car.

If you still have questions post back. FYI, I am a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry and an avid autocrosser in my spare time. Suspension, tires and alignment means a lot to me and I've done quite a bit of research and follow-on experimentation of my own. The autocrossing and commute "allow" me to experience several sets of tires a year.

Scott
90SM
Indianapolis area

 

Can anyone tell me if this is camber related? I pulled off my wheels after 3,500 miles and rotated them front to back. When I had each wheel off, I rolled them about 20 feet to a grassy area to wash them down. I noticed that it seemed the rear wheels wouldn't roll straight. They would go forward, then want to tilt over. The fronts though rolled in a straight line. I'm pretty sure I have the correct--not vice versa.

 

Good info, Scott.

Octane, I think the factory spec for the rear is zero to -1.5. My car is lowered with H&R springs and using H-sport arms, I set the rear to -1.5, which is a nice compromise for street and track. I rotate tires every 2k or so. This is with 17 inch 215's all around.

I don't care about tire wear on this car unless it hurts the handling. My track motorcycle tire budget is $2,500+ a season (seven sets at $375 a set, slicks.) I could care less about spending $500 a year on tires for a sports car. :smile: However, I expect to get two seasons from the Kumho MX tires on the car now, if I remove them for winter.

The stock tires on my car when it was stock, the tires wore like yours. Yes, it is camber-related. Pretty normal, me thinks. You can get it to zero with adjustable lower arms. The stock arms are not adjustable.

Phil

 

I just noticed how bad mine wore out last night.

I am replacing my wheels and tires tonight so I can take some pictures of these.
But I noticed how the inner side of the tires were bald while the outside tread still looked ok. I have done no modifications to the suspension at all....still stock. I have avoided lowering it because I was worried about fast tire wear once I lowered it.
It looks like an allignment problem in a way, but it looks exactly like a camber problem. I speak from experience when it comes to camber.

I have been lowering my vehicles for the past 14 years now. I lowered my Tahoe 2" with torsion keys (in September) and the front tires wore exactly the way my rear MINI tires did. I ended up adding new 2" dropped spindles to solve the problem when I added my new wheels and tires last month
MINI is stock.
I think I am am going to take it in and see about an allignment before I wear out my new Toyos.

 

MiniMac, how many miles did you go between rotating tires?

 

Hey Dom.

The tires I have on the back have been there the entire time.
I wore the fronts bald, and replaced them. So to answer your question,
I never rotated them. The tires on the back have been there since I bought the car. I now have 26,000 miles on the car.
I know, I know......I should have rotated my tires to prolong the life. that is why I had to buy new ones for the front.
However I knew I was going to buy new rims and tires at anytime....but things came up and I didn't get to until this month when I was forced to after hitting a curb and bending a rim.

 

Did the front ones have any unusual wear? I wonder if since I rotate mine, that when the tire is on the front, they get extra wear on the outside shoulders and when on the rear, get extra wear on the inside, evening things out over the long term...

 

I could see that making sence, but I couldn't tell for sure since they have been on the back since I bought it. I did notice that the fronts have a tendency to wear on the outside, but nothing to extreme. Plus you could imagine the turning would cause more wear that the rear tires would.


I will have to send you some pictures tomorrow.
My wheels are showing up tonight, and the aero kit goes on tomorrow.
It will be like having a new MINI again!

 

Stock MINI alignment settings for camber
Front -0.1 to -0.9 degrees
Rear -1.0 to -2.0 degrees

Joshua-
Your negative rear stock camber did not cause your tire cupping. You need to align your MINI and if you do not have many miles on your car, your dealer needs to do the alignment under warranty and replace the worn tires.

Rear swaybars do not affect tire wear- how you drive does.

Even with -2.4 degrees negative camber in the front and -1.4 degrees negative camber in the rear my tires are wearing fine. Yokohama ES100 in 215/45-17 size.

Before I changed to autocross alignment (using front camber plates and rear lower control arms) I had front -0.5 degrees and rear -0.7 degrees and it was also fine (smoother) and tire wear was also fine.

 

I'm currently up in Cincy getting my 10K maintenance, tire rotation and JCW airbox upgrade. The service person called yesterday to inform me that the rear tires have some cupping too. She also did claimed that this is somewhat normal due to the MINI's rear suspension. I haven't picked the car up yet, so I don't know how bad it will be, running these tires on the front now. More later.....

 

>your toe is probably way out in the rear.

I think the rear toe needs to be adjusted too. :smile: