square vs staggered wear: your experience

[VictorH]

When I was first considering a spare set of wheels for the track I went through the whole square vs staggered debate. It made sense that with square set up you could rotate front to back, side to side and it made more it more economical if you wanted to dismount and flip the tires insides to out to get really the maximum wear out of each set.

For various reasons I stayed with a staggered set up just 1/2 inch wider front and back (9" and 10"). Based on my wear patterns I think that perhaps this wasn't such a bad choice after all. Now I'm not one to do burn outs, drifting or power slides so that might make a difference in wear. However, I'm just about down to the wear bars on my Continentals (6 track days and rest street use) and my tires are:
Rears: 4/32" both rears (getting close to 3/32 but I'll round up to 4)
Fronts: 4/32 left and 5/32 right

I'm going to to get one more track event out of these then they go in the trash.

My other set of tires are Hankook Ventus which have approximately 6,000 miles and 4 1/2 track days on them. Again the wear front to back is within 1/32. The other thing is that the tread wear from inside to outside of the tire is also fairly even. Ever driven a car where when you look at the mounted tire on the car and you think, "oh they still look pretty good" and then when you pull the wheels off the car and look the inside is worn almost completely bald while the outside looks pretty fresh.

I think this is really a reflection on how well balanced and set up this car is to start with. I've driven cars that ate rear tires for lunch, i.e. 7-8K from the rears while the fronts would last double that. But I've really been pleased with the wear and now I'm even happier that I didn't opt for the square set up. I think square still has some advantages and ultimately even with the fairly even wear I'm getting I bet if I could rotate front to back they'd last even longer but I don't think the compromise is as big as I might have thought it would be and I do think the staggered set up helps maintain a more even handling balance.

What's your experience been and are there other advantages of the square set up that I'm overlooking?

[rzm3]

On my AD08 the tire wear was pretty even front to rear as well. I think this dependents heavily on having a proper alignment.

[Gearhead999s]

I have run Toyo RA'1's,888's,Nitto NT05's,Continental slicks(Hoosier's) all in 275/35 18 on either 9.5 or 10's and without a question my rears wear at 50% rate more than my fronts do.I run a square setup so I can rotate them front to rear to equalize the wear.My rears wear more on the inside with the fronts more on the outside.When they are at about 50% remaining I usually have them flipped on the rim to help the equalization out even more.I do know there is room for improvement in this from a proper track alignment but as the car is a DD that is not really an option for me.

[DerekSelmanRacing]

My primary reason for running a square setup on my Z4 is handling; the car is closer to neutral instead of push. That change along with a few others has been very successful. I anticipate the same change will be made to my M3 on order...E90, ZCP, DCT, etc.

Gearhead: Even if your car is a DD, why wouldn't you run more camber in the front and less in the rear? It would do a lot to equalize wear and would probably loosen up the car for track. Admittedly, I don't know M3's that well yet, but unless your car is already loose???

joel

[lucid]

Originally Posted by Gearhead999s

I have run Toyo RA'1's,888's,Nitto NT05's,Continental slicks(Hoosier's) all in 275/35 18 on either 9.5 or 10's and without a question my rears wear at 50% rate more than my fronts do.I run a square setup so I can rotate them front to rear to equalize the wear.My rears wear more on the inside with the fronts more on the outside.When they are at about 50% remaining I usually have them flipped on the rim to help the equalization out even more.I do know there is room for improvement in this from a proper track alignment but as the car is a DD that is not really an option for me.

The front shoulder wear went away in my experience with camber plates and negative camber at ~2deg at -.5" below stock ride height. I was heating up the insides with rear camber maxed out, so I had it dialed back to -1.5 and wear was pretty even for me then. I don't know why you are going through the rears much faster. You must be pretty aggressive on exits? Are you on tight tracks mostly?

[lucid]

Originally Posted by DerekSelmanRacing

My primary reason for running a square setup on my Z4 is handling; the car is closer to neutral instead of push. That change along with a few others has been very successful. I anticipate the same change will be made to my M3 on order...E90, ZCP, DCT, etc.

Z4(M) pushes significantly out of the box. Not the case for the E92 M3 IMO.

[Gearhead999s]

Originally Posted by lucid

The front shoulder wear went away in my experience with camber plates and negative camber at ~2deg at -.5" below stock ride height. I was heating up the insides with rear camber maxed out, so I had it dialed back to -1.5 and wear was pretty even for me then. I don't know why you are going through the rears much faster. You must be pretty aggressive on exits? Are you on tight tracks mostly?

Even at Mosport which is mostly 3 & 4 th gear corners I wear the rears at a greater rate.I might be a little aggressive on the throttle

[Gearhead999s]

Originally Posted by DerekSelmanRacing

My primary reason for running a square setup on my Z4 is handling; the car is closer to neutral instead of push. That change along with a few others has been very successful. I anticipate the same change will be made to my M3 on order...E90, ZCP, DCT, etc.

Gearhead: Even if your car is a DD, why wouldn't you run more camber in the front and less in the rear? It would do a lot to equalize wear and would probably loosen up the car for track. Admittedly, I don't know M3's that well yet, but unless your car is already loose???

joel

My old car was usually quite loose & turned in quite well and I really did not need more front grip.One thing that I did find out with a square setup is to run at least a 10mm spacer on the rear which really helps with my oversteer issue.I think the other issue was was slow pad release when hot on the rear which only helped to aggravate the oversteer issue on corner entry.It was better with the Pagids on but the brake balance would still go to the rear as the brakes got hot.That should be a non issue now as I sprung for a 380/355mm stoptech BBK for my new car.I will be playing with alignment on the new car as I will doing some time attacks this year.

[VictorH]

Originally Posted by Gearhead999s

Even at Mosport which is mostly 3 & 4 th gear corners I wear the rears at a greater rate.I might be a little aggressive on the throttle

I like that, taking the checkered flag sideways. Don't complain about the rear tire wear though, I think we've figured that out.

[rzm3]

I run about -2.5 deg on front camber and tire wear is pretty even.

On my rears my inner edges wore out sooner than the outer. It could be that I have too much camber, but it could also just be from corner exits as the outside shoulders wore out very nicely. Overall it was not bad at all. The AD08 had such a long life...

I will closely monitor my new set of Cups and report back.

[MaxL]

rldzhao - how much camber do you run at the rear? I was planning to run similar tire set up this season, and will install GC kit soon, so will have more flexibility with camber.

Would you say -2.5 front and -1.7 rear would be fine for car that also has some street duty (not much though).

[rzm3]

This sounds reasonable. Be sure to closely monitor the wear of your tires as there is no one-size-fits-all for car set up.

If you have a pyrometer that would be the best. Ideally you'd want the temperature of the outside, middle, and inside of your tire to be reasonably close to each other (i.e. +/-10 degrees F).

Take a look here, it has a lot of good info: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...nd_Feeding.pdf

[Richbot]

I've always been more worried about right/left wear than front/rear wear. Most tracks work one side much harder than the other. I've also found that once a tire gets worn in at a corner of the car (right front, left rear, etc.) you're going to give up a tenth or two for half of the next session if you rotate while the tires wear in to the new demands of the corners you've put them on. There were weekends when I bolted on a fresh set of 2/32" R888's and never removed them from the car because I knew I'd be throwing away time I didn't have. None of this was on an M3 but I think it's relevant to any serious track driving.

Pyrometer is invaluable, if the car's balance is ok but you can't find any more time on the track you can often find an issue with the pyrometer that you wouldn't find otherwise. I'd have real-time IR pyrometers on my SRF if it was legal.

[Gearhead999s]

Just so people do not think that I am sideways all the time

[Cruzer03]

Originally Posted by Gearhead999s

Just so people do not think that I am sideways all the time

Which helmet is that?

[Gearhead999s]

Originally Posted by Cruzer03

Which helmet is that?

It is a Bell S2R



It is quite heavy otherwise I like the helmet!