Novice tracking an E90 M3: tires?

Done some events on Michelin Pilot Sport 4S.  Great tire for my skill level, i.e. low.  But even with close to the max possible camber with my setup, I'm still rolling the fronts a lot.

Would track tires mitigate that issue?

If so, any recommendations?  I'd love something as communicative, noob-friendly, and long-lived as possible (in that order), with as little added grip as possible vs. the PS4S (don't want to bury my mistakes in grip).  Would be grateful for advice from anyone who knows this platform, or any other too-heavy car with Mac struts up front...

Not a tire issue, but a camber issue. Have you done this yet https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=521177? Whats your current front camber and toe settings? 

This should get you to around 1.5 degrees which should give your tires much more life. Next up is a set of camber plates to get closer to a good street/track setting of around 2.2 - 2.5 degrees front camber. 

Pilot Sport 4S should be perfectly capable in a novice run group for fantastic grip levels and great street manners. 

Olemiss540 said:

Not a tire issue, but a camber issue. Have you done this yet https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=521177? Whats your current front camber and toe settings? 

This should get you to around 1.5 degrees which should give your tires much more life. Next up is a set of camber plates to get closer to a good street/track setting of around 2.2 - 2.5 degrees front camber.

Thanks.  Have camber plates already.  Tried up to -2º camber; alignment guy says that's close to the max possible and I don't want to change to different plates for a number of reasons.  Zero toe.

Stiffer tires might help a bit but you're always going to have some of that with a front heavy car with limited camber. It might seem counterintuitive but more tire pressure might help by giving the tires more support. In general I feel like most street tires don't really cover up mistakes very much. Some of the endurance racing biased 200tw tires probably aren't a ton faster than your michelins but will last much longer and might even be a bit cheaper to buy.

IamFODI said:

Olemiss540 said:

Not a tire issue, but a camber issue. Have you done this yet https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=521177? Whats your current front camber and toe settings? 

This should get you to around 1.5 degrees which should give your tires much more life. Next up is a set of camber plates to get closer to a good street/track setting of around 2.2 - 2.5 degrees front camber.

Thanks.  Have camber plates already.  Tried up to -2º camber; alignment guy says that's close to the max possible and I don't want to change to different plates for a number of reasons.  Zero toe.

Can you be more specific with what camber plates you own? What does "close to the max possible" mean? You need to go to the max possible camber setting and/or stop overdrive/scrubbing your front tires a bit. How many days/weekends are causing this wear issue?

dps214 said:

Stiffer tires might help a bit but you're always going to have some of that with a front heavy car with limited camber. It might seem counterintuitive but more tire pressure might help by giving the tires more support. In general I feel like most street tires don't really cover up mistakes very much. Some of the endurance racing biased 200tw tires probably aren't a ton faster than your michelins but will last much longer and might even be a bit cheaper to buy.

Thanks.  Tried tire pressure as well; even running max safe pressure didn't fix it.

Also noticed lower-than-PS4S prices on some 200TW endurance tires, e.g. Hankook R-S4 (is that one of the tires you're thinking of?)

IamFODI said:

dps214 said:

Stiffer tires might help a bit but you're always going to have some of that with a front heavy car with limited camber. It might seem counterintuitive but more tire pressure might help by giving the tires more support. In general I feel like most street tires don't really cover up mistakes very much. Some of the endurance racing biased 200tw tires probably aren't a ton faster than your michelins but will last much longer and might even be a bit cheaper to buy.

Thanks.  Tried tire pressure as well; even running max safe pressure didn't fix it.

Also noticed lower-than-PS4S prices on some 200TW endurance tires, e.g. Hankook R-S4 (is that one of the tires you're thinking of?)

Do you need new tires? How many weekends have you done and how bad is the shoulder wear?

IamFODI said:

dps214 said:

Stiffer tires might help a bit but you're always going to have some of that with a front heavy car with limited camber. It might seem counterintuitive but more tire pressure might help by giving the tires more support. In general I feel like most street tires don't really cover up mistakes very much. Some of the endurance racing biased 200tw tires probably aren't a ton faster than your michelins but will last much longer and might even be a bit cheaper to buy.

Thanks.  Tried tire pressure as well; even running max safe pressure didn't fix it.

Also noticed lower-than-PS4S prices on some 200TW endurance tires, e.g. Hankook R-S4 (is that one of the tires you're thinking of?)

RS4 are a common choice as a low-grip-but-long-life-and-track-friendly tire.

Nitto NT01s are another great option.  Ignore the 100 treadwear rating on them, they're an old tire and that's from an earlier time before treadwear numbers got used to manipulate rulebooks the way they do now.

If you can afford it, I really recommend getting a second set of wheels to hold the track tires.

Almost all BMWs needs a TON of negative camber up front to get a good contact patch. I ran -3.5 on an E36 M3 and I've seen people go into the -4 range. The E90 needs that camber too.

A different tire is not going to change enough. Maybe a full race tire would help, but it will still eat the outside edge. It's the nature of the suspension.

What I would do is get some Vorschlag camber plates, then have your alignment tech mark them at -2 or so for street use, then -3.5 for track use. Then change the camber when you get to the track. That's what I did.

No tire brand or width ever changed it like the camber did.

Thanks, everyone.

I did leave out a bunch of detail because I didn't want to drop a text wall on you all.  Appreciate your patience and willingness to help.

I have Turner Motorsport Hybrid camber plates.  They're supposed to be able to do well over -2º camber, so I'm a bit skeptical of my alignment guy's statement that he couldn't get more out of them (he also hadn't encountered them before seeing them on my car and had to be told how to use them).    I'll be getting a second opinion.  It's also possible that something's bent under there, so I'll be investigating that as well.

However, regardless of how that pans out, I still wanted to see if switching to track tires would help – not "fix" it necessarily, but help.  Trying to cover all the bases.

I've been told by multiple instructors and friends that I'm ready to start thinking about track tires anyway, even apart from the edge wear issue.  I've resisted because I don't like the idea of adding grip until I'm a better driver.  But if there's a reasonable chance it'd help the edge wear problem, that'll probably push me over the edge into trying them.

Does that make sense?

Just get the right tires for the application. I suppose it depends on the type of driver you are and the way you learn, but in general I'm not a fan of the "learn to drive the car on bad tires" concept. The problem is that tires make a huge difference in feel and performance, so you learn the car on bad tires and then basically have to totally relearn the car once you switch to good tires. And along the way you might pick up some misconceptions of what's possible that actually hinder your learning on the good tires. Now your "bad" tires aren't all that far off from 200tw/track tires so the difference won't be that extreme. But if you're going to end up there anyway, just do it now and get the added benefit of helping the tire wear a bit. And like I said just adding grip alone doesn't really cover up bad driving. I think most 200tws actually do a pretty good job of still showing driving mistakes.

dps214 said:

Just get the right tires for the application. I suppose it depends on the type of driver you are and the way you learn, but in general I'm not a fan of the "learn to drive the car on bad tires" concept. The problem is that tires make a huge difference in feel and performance, so you learn the car on bad tires and then basically have to totally relearn the car once you switch to good tires. And along the way you might pick up some misconceptions of what's possible that actually hinder your learning on the good tires. Now your "bad" tires aren't all that far off from 200tw/track tires so the difference won't be that extreme. But if you're going to end up there anyway, just do it now and get the added benefit of helping the tire wear a bit. And like I said just adding grip alone doesn't really cover up bad driving. I think most 200tws actually do a pretty good job of still showing driving mistakes.

Thanks.  Makes sense!