tsjoel

These tires are from my 2001 540i. I wanted to post my question on this forum because the basic knowledge on this site is superior to most others. I noticed the tires wearing on the outsides of the fronts but the tires were shot and I was just waiting until I put my snow tires on. When I took the back tires off the cords were showing on both back inside tires. Do you think the car needs aligned? What would cause the insides of the backs and the outsides of the fronts to wear like this? Thanks in advance for your help.

The Brewmeister

Tread wear looks pretty even across most of the tread except for
the inside and outside edges. Two things cause this, slight under-inflation
(unlikely) or spirited driving! (likely )

Mark in Baltimore

The car unequivocally needs an alignment. Whether the odd wear characteristics are due to the alignment or not, you have to look at the most obvious source and go from there.

The Brewmeister

I assume that the rears are the lower pic?

chris walrod

the rears look like under inflation whereas the fronts (bottom pic, right?) look like normal tread wear.

If its been some time since you have had an alignment, couldnt hurt. At least for the new tires sake

The Brewmeister

Just curious. How many miles are on this set? Are these characteristics
present on both sides?

BS911

That's kind of odd... I just finally got to putting my snow tires on this weekend. I've procrastinated about 2 months more than usual this year due to the ridiculously warm weather. My rear tire looked about the same as yours. Cords showing on the left inner rear, and VERY close to showing on the right inner rear. They have about 18,000 miles on them. My fronts don't look as bad though.

Is your car lowered and on the limits of how much camber you can correct for? After lowering mine and getting a full alignment done, I was still running a lot of negative cmaber for a daily driver. I *THINK* there is not that much more they can take out evenly. They have worn very even and consistent so I'm not too worried about it. How even is the wear across the rest of the tire? From the pics it looks like the whole tire is pretty much done even though the inner bend looks to have taken the brunt of the hard force. If you went back in time to just before the cords came out, would they have looked in need of replacing anyway? My (non-track based) experience has shown this to be quite the norm. Now if your getting to cords on the inner side but still have plenty of tread life above the wear indicators left on the rest of the tire then maybe you do have a bigger problem.

Like Mark said though - an alignment is the only way to know. I only know on my particular car/setup because I've observed it since a known alignment. I'm going to get one again soon anyway.

FYI - missed the part about the Bimmer. All of my comments related to the 993 - not sure what is normal or not on a BMW.

geolab

I would first check with who is driving the 540i with you.
The 540i is dormant beast, and is one of the greatest for drifting or drift-driving.
I may be wrong, but I strongly think this is the cause.
This kind of tyre wear has been done probably on empty parking lots

Pete

Joel,

Cords showing or not, those tires look to me to be at the end of their life. In your first picture you can see the tire is worn right down to the wear bars or whatever they are called. The tread wear looks pretty even so I don't think alignment is the problem, but I would get an alignment automatically when buying a new set of tires anyway. I think the cord is showing because of overall wear and probably because of improper inflation pressure.

Pete

TheOtherEric

It's normal for the inside edge to be worn, but I don't think it's normal for the outside edge (even up front) to cord. Maybe somebody can confirm that. I'd strongly suspect alignment issues up front. Rear alignment might be ok since it only corded once the tire was *completely* bald anyway (right pic I assume).

ppressle

I think the front wear is typical for stock alignment and spirited cornering. I have camber plates (-1deg?) on my e34 and get pretty even wear. The rears look like you have worn them down to almost nothing. Check the rear toe links (dogbones), if they are worn, they will change your rear toe (I think).

DJF1

BMW's are always agrresively setup by the factory. i could not believe that my M3 called for a -1.9 camber on the rear!!! That is factory specs!!! I was told then that bimmers in general are always hovering around -1 on the rear and above. If that is true it will explain the inner wear...

Paul902

any possibility that (the tires are wider than stock and) they are rubbing on some bodywork?

viperbob

It is the alignment with all the toe added in. It makes every revolution of the tire a scraping movement rather than a roll.

Droops83

This is very true, we work on BMWs as well as Porsches and both makes call for very aggressive camber settings, too aggressive for how most people drive em, hence the uneven wear on the inside edge. We see this all the time and since most customers don't crawl under their car on a normal basis, they can't believe they need new tires, since the outside will still look ok. For most customers we dial em as positive as they will reasonablly go, in the -0.8-1 degree range.

Suffice it to say, get the car aligned at a good shop when you get the tires mounted, and make sure that you maintain the tire pressure! Check em every few weeks! Tires lose a pound or 2 of pressure every month. Also, BMW's recommendation for 29f/33r cold unladen is a bit low for such a heavy car, we run 32/34, and of course you should add more than that if you are carrying a lot of passengers/cargo.

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Chris Andropoulos
Schneider Autohaus
Santa Barbara, CA