What is causing the outside 1.5" of my tires to wear significantly more than the rest of the tire. These are Nitto NT01 R comps, that have been obviously used at the track. They’ve seen Batavia for autocross twice, but most of their life was spent at Dunville, TMP and WGI.
They came off my STi of which I am currently running -2 deg camber in the front, -1 deg in the rear, and whiteline adjustable sways on the stiffest settings. Stock struts and springs. Is this a suspension problem, or a driver problem? More camber, or slower turn entrances? Tire pressures are currently 36/38 cold.
Needs more cowbell. Errr I mean camber. Your sidewalls are rolling over and the inside of the tire isn’t contacting as hard as the outside. You need more(read: less, ie: more negative) camber.
Pressures and camber seem right on from this side of the keyboard. But it looks like they are rolling over. I would say more of a rolling over problem more than camber just by how rounded the outside edge is.
First suggestion is try the old white shoe polish trick. I would make a guess that 45/45 psi hot is as high as you would want to go on a street tire (36 to 38 hot on a more true racing tire, not too sure where the Nittos are). If it feels like it is “skating” then it’s too high.
On the driver side of things looks like they are pushing, how much steering angle do you put in when you drive. The better the tire, the less angle is required to make maximum grip. Even on the subconscious level try driving with just you thumb and fore finger pinching the wheel instead of a death grip.
Looking at the wear bars you could run more camber but that is not accounting for the 1.5" edge that you originally mentioned.
How’s the toe, could be toe in…
As for those tire. Just get them dismounted and flip them. Even if the say “mount this side out” “this direction only” they will be fine to get a couple more events out of.
Looking at the wear, I agree that there could be some rollover. I’ll try using shoe polish to verify that. How do you combat rollover, other than adding more pressure?
Yea, I do dive into turns a little hard, but I’m not understeering through the turns. I’m not fighting the car or wrestling it around the track. :wiggle:
The only time the car and I argue is when I don’t let it track all the way out like it likes (which doesn’t help the tires)
When I had it aligned last it had zero toe. I suppose it could have changed since last summer.
One more thing I just read tonight was a larger front bar will help reduce outside tire wear. Which makes sense because you can keep more load on the inside tire and make it work more. But that is grabbing at straws.
I guess the thing to do is to dial in more camber and see how the next set wears (now the question is do you want to flip the current ones and burn through them first). How are your street tires wearing?
and +1 on flipping 'em.