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      09-09-2013, 09:12 PM   #1
VictorH
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Drives: '09 M3
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: SC

iTrader: (4)

Is -2.5 degrees of neg camber enough?

There's a poll going on for optimal front camber setting and the best overall compromise seems to be -2.5 degrees of neg camber up front. I have been running this setting for the past 2 years in my daily driver with no adverse tire wear issues.

However, for the track, I would say that based on my observations it's not enough. I've just now worn out a set of RE-11s which have been great and were used exclusively on the track but most of the tire wear is on the outer 50% of the tire. There were several E92s and a couple of E90 M3s (what I have) for every car that I checked (didn't get to talk to every driver about their camber settings but -2.5 seems to be the consensus as well) the tire wear on the fronts was just like mine, mostly on the outer half of the tire with not nearly as much wear on the inner 50%. Looks like it doesn't matter if it's R-comps (most of the cars there) or street tires.

So the questions are: 1) What is the optimal camber setting for the track?; 2) Does anyone have a reliable method to change the camber (that's easy enough) and measure it reasonably accurately (that is much more challenging in my opinion). I don't think the toe change from -2.5 to say -3.0 or -3.2 would be huge, but if optimal is -4.0 then the toe change is going to be too great (and I bet my tires would rub the top of the shock/coil) to be feasible without changing both toe and camber, i.e. you're going to the alignment shop.
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