racingluxury

Hi guys. I just had an alignment done on my car because the inside of the tires were wearing too too much. These are the new specs. Can anyone please tell me if these specs are correct? I've attached a picture but if you can't see it, here it is:


Lf ft camber: -0.6 Rt ft camber: -0.7
Lf ft toe: 0.06 Rt ft toe: 0.05


Total Toe: 0.11


Lf rr camber: -1.3 Rt rr camber: -1.4
Lf rr toe: 0.20 Rt rr toe: 0.20


Total Toe: 0.41


Thanks,
John

Euronuts

Looks good on your rear alignment as specs for factory is a -2.0
my last alignment i had them spec'd to -1.5 and have noticed a difference in the wear of the rear tires with minimal loss in performance.
Did you ask your alignment shop to go less camber?

abe76247

They did reduce the negative camber in rear to a value below BMW spec. That is why the after spec range is shown red on your alignment printout.
It could be even less negative usually. I have a 2007 550i and I had an alignment done and they would only set mine to -1.6 each side. I think that value is the minimum that returns a green printout as my after readout was green for all settings. Mine started at - 2.2 and -2.4. I have since set my camber even lower to -.6 on each side with total toe-in of .30 degree. I have some old alignment gauges used to set up race cars and I did it myself. I did find that rear eccentric bolts that adjust toe-in don't grip well. I used Loc-Tite thread locker between the eccentric bolt heads and the eccentric washers to be sure they would stay. After torquing the nuts I could turn the eccentric bolts without much force. I removed the bolts and checked them and they are not scored or otherwise treated to give them better grip against the aluminum frame. The Loc-Tite (red, lower bond strength) did make the bolt stay put after torquing. Usually Loc-Tite is put on threads to stop bolts from loosening but it can be used between metal flat faces to stop motion also.

My car drives great with the much reduced camber. If the reduced camber settings have diminshed cornering forces I can't tell it. I would think the absolute maximum cornering grip is reduced slightly by the reduced camber but the DAMNED high cost of eating rear tires up driving straight down the highway I know has gone down.

racingluxury

I actually didn't ask them anything. They just did this and I didn't even notice the red marks on the rears until I got home so I decided to post a question. Thanks for your quick feed back. As long as I don't slide out of a corner I think I should be fine with that. Now I'll keep an eye on the tires to see how they wear down. Thanks again.

racingluxury

Thanks for the extra tip on keeping the alignment tighter. So your -1.6 camber is more then mine's correct? I'm getting confused on these figures.

abe76247

Yes. negative camber leans the top of the tire inward into the wheel opening. When you corner hard the outboard tire gets loaded and it pushes the tire inward at bottom. If it starts negative the bottom of tire is displaced inwardward and the loading squares it up with road and keeps grip via flat tread contact.
If you drive aggressively often then it is worth the tire wear. If you drive less aggressively then the tires will last longer and you won't notice the reduced camber diminishing the cornering.

racingluxury

Thanks for the explanation but what I wanted to know was is my -1.3 camber more or less then your -1.5 camber?

abe76247

Your -1.3 is less. Yours is closer to the tire being perpendicular to pavement

Boost7

I just got a 4 wheel alignment recently too, and asked the shop to reduce some camber to increase thread life on my rear wheels. I'm not an expert of these things, so I'm posting my printout and we can do a comparison, or whom ever is more knowledgeable, please tell me if it's good or not.

abe76247

They did a decent alignment. The rear camber could have been less negative. They were likely scard to go too far out of factory spec range.The reduction from what it started with to what they adjusted it to will decrease rear inside tire wear a lot.