bloomjbmw

Okay, first question - regarding negative camber:

First of all I love the way the car looks so this is simply a matter of tire wear.

Is the amount camber on the rear tires normal for a 997.2 C2S? This particular car has H&R springs and GT3 Sway Bars so that may affect the stance...I don't know. Again, I love the way it looks. My question is this: will my rear tires wear out on the inside prematurely? I don't plan to race the car so should I consider getting the camber adjusted out a bit or is this the way these cars are setup regardless of the suspension mods that are on it?

See pictures.

Thanks,

Joshua

PelicanParts.com

Kind of hard to tell from the pictures, but it does not look excessive or have a noticeable 'pitch'.

rodH

impossible to tell just by pictures, what are the measurements? It does look a little more than most, but that isn't very scientific. Mine looked best with -2.5 degrees of camber, but I went through rear tires in under 2000 miles

OKB

you have to get it aligned to find out whats going on, it is going to be worse in camber the lower you go. but if they can get it straight or not is dependent on how much adjustment is left

Tj40

Why not measure the camber yourself? - check to see if your floor is level across the rear of the car and then a spirit level and a micrometer will give you a good measurement - go from the bottom of the rim to the top through the center cap to take the tyre out of the equation.


A bit of math and the difference (camber) is measured.


It may not be super accurate but it will give you an order of magnitude on where the measurements are.


Visuals can be misleading - I always find that BMW's seem to run with a lot of rear camber - check out the rear wheels next time you are following one on the highway, they are visibly canted in at the top and most of them are only running -2 degrees or so.

Bruce In Philly

These modern Porsches have noticeable rear camber. I wore the inside of my rears quickly so I had an alignment and told them to take out the negative camber. Others here say my inside tire wear was from out-of-spec toe.

I just don't like my rear tires riding on the inside. I also think the a spec alignment makes the car's handling pretty dead...... I took out the camber in the rear and added very slight negative in the front... now I have more of a sports car.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Petza914

Congratulations and nice looking car from what I can see in the pics - you're close too, as I'm down in Seneca.

Here's what I see. Your car has either Turbo wheels or Turbo-look wheels as they made the Turbo look wheels in a NB width and offset version, but I'm thinking that one of the POs actually installed Turbo wheels which are a fitment for a Widebody car (Turbo, GT2, C4, C4S, GTS, etc) and the only way to prevent them from rubbing was to use that much negative camber. If they're OEM Porsche wheels, on the wheel by the valvestem will be 2 numbers - one is width and the other is offset. Let us know what these numbers are. Proper Narrow Body widths and offsets should be like 11.5" wide with 62 et (my Champions), 12" wide with 68 et (GT3 wheels)

Although with the other mods you mention, like the H&R springs and adjustable sway bars, it's likely the PO tracked the car and may have dialed-in that much negative camber. Did you have a PPO performed before buying the car as I'm curious what the DME report looks like for overrevs as that will also shed some light on whether it was tracked, which may help to explain the camber settngs.

To answer your actual question though, it visually looks like you are running a lot of negative camber, and yes, it will wear the insides of the rear tires prematurely. As Bruce mentions, it's not just rear camber that dramatically shortens the life of the tires, but also rear toe. For a street car, minimize both of these and you'll see 20,000-25,000 miles out of a set of quality rear tires and the fronts should last through 2 sets of rears.

BIG smoke

O/P - How many miles do you expect to be doing in this car over the year. As Petza and BiP mentioned, with the correct set up you may get great wear out of your tires. If you are a 8ooo mile a year person, your tires will expire before the wear out. For me, tire wear was more effected by my toe pointing. There was a terrible hammer mark under my throttle peddle and my weathertech had a dent.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

bloomjbmw

The car has seen a few DE's from what I was told by the owner. I ran a DME report myself and found nothing of concern.

The wheels are a second set of turbo I wheels the owner bought and powdercoated. I also have he original wheels which are also Turbo I's.

Your comments reaffirm some of my thoughts regarding toe and camber as it is required for racing and/or lowered stance.

I'd like to get it looked at to see what of this can be adjusted without putting the original springs back on since I do love the look.

Where do you go for alignments? Are you a regular at Quaker Steak meetings?

bloomjbmw

This is an extra vehicle for me so I know it will get little regular use...I'll be happy to hit 5k/yr.

gpjli2

I see no reason for this. I have gone thru 3 sets of rears and the wear on them has been even. They dry rotted about the same time they hit wear bars at 5k miles a year. Surely you would not run like this for the visuals. If this is some sort of track setup I'd go back to stock specs if possible. If not I'd make suspension changes before I went thru $$$ tires

Petza914

I get to cars and coffee a few times a year, but haven't been to the regular meetings. I might make it to this year's Christmas party at Porsche of Greenville though.

I usually have all my wheel and tire work done at Butler Tire in Marietta GA, but also have had corner balance and alignment work done at ProTech too.

rickdogg82

I'm guessing this setting has been chosen so that the wheels/tires are flush instead of sticking out.

the_buch

Plus, you'll have to consider whether reducing the negative camber will cause rubbing at that height - hard to tell from the photo angles you've provided.

Macster

No experience with the 997 but with my Boxster it came out of the alignment shop with quite a bit of negative camber. More than generally called for yet still within Porsche specs just at the very high side what was allowed but I don't recall the numbers. Since I was having the car aligned because new tires were fitted and not wanting to compromise tire life I questioned the shop manager about this amount of camber. He assured me the tire wear would be just fine and the car's ride and handling and feel would be unaffected. He told me he was trying to save me some money as to adjust the rear camber would add I some extar cost to the job.

The manage was convincing and I decided to accept the car as it was. It helped the shop had an excellent rep for aligment and in fact I had used the shop years before with another car and the techs resolved a severe misaligment problem at a very reasonable cost.

It turned out the alignment shop manager was right. Tire life was just fine and the car felt and drove as good as it ever did.

But I have to point out while the camber was extreme it was still within "spec". Also, the other alignment settings were on the money or corrected for the high amount of camber.

Excessive rear camber with the other adjustments not compatibel with the camber could have different less rosy results for you and your car.

My advice is because tires are too expensive to waste unnecessarily to get the car in and have the alignment sorted and get the camber and toe and other adjustments set correctly. Why worry? Why wonder? And no one can look at those pictures and make any real call on the correctness or lack of same regarding camber or any other alignment related adustment/setting.