pulled the summers off to find this!!!

[Xyloft]

both fronts are appearing to rub against the bottom coil of the spring. going to go get an allignment ASAP, but wondering if this could possibly be from worn front struts? car has 75,000 miles stock suspension. I was planning on replacing the suspension soon, but was hoping to get to spring.




i have the winter wheels/tires on now, but am not driving it until i get it aligned. it only appears to be rubbing when the suspension compresses.

they were not worn like this in May when i put them on. i didn't notice any cupping on the inside either.

edit - I should add that I was planning on replacing these tires before i put them back on in the spring due to the tread wear.

[tuco44]

Yikes, those tires are not just worn - they are ruined. You're lucky it did not let go on you, or are they RFTs? Did you go to larger/wider tires than stock?

[Xyloft]

Originally Posted by tuco44

Yikes, those tires are not just worn - they are ruined. You're lucky it did not let go on you, or are they RFTs? Did you go to larger/wider tires than stock?

oh yeah... these things are destroyed. When I saw that I thought the same thing "holy sh!t! how did these not explode!"

but I'm more concerned that they are some how rubbing on the springs. i dont think that's normal.

these are the stock 205/50 r17s on the stock rims on the stock suspension.

[b1aze]

Considering youre past the wear bars toward the inside of the tire, i think thats probably pretty standard, especially if you have pushed it hard into many corners lately.

[Xyloft]

Originally Posted by b1aze

Considering youre past the wear bars toward the inside of the tire, i think thats probably pretty standard, especially if you have pushed it hard into many corners lately.

but look at how the rubber is worn on the edge closest to the camera. it looks like something cut directly into it.

The Dealer wants 175$ to do an alignment.

I will add that the car was .5-1 inch lower when i changed my winters, than when i changed the oil in july. in july my jack barely fit under the car, but last weekend the car was way too low for it to fit.

[b1aze]

This is just a guess, but the lower spring perch shouldn't move at all in reference to the mounting point. I have very little experience with BMW suspensions, but if the lower strut assembly resembles anything like a normal coil over strut setup, the lower perch shouldn't move in reference to the lower mounting point. The bushings could wear however, dropping the whole assembly lower than it should be.

Just speculating.

[Xyloft]

Originally Posted by b1aze

This is just a guess, but the lower spring perch shouldn't move at all in reference to the mounting point. I have very little experience with BMW suspensions, but if the lower strut assembly resembles anything like a normal coil over strut setup, the lower perch shouldn't move in reference to the lower mounting point. The bushings could wear however, dropping the whole assembly lower than it should be.

Just speculating.

i'm going to pull the wheel back off tomorrow and see if the bump stop is damaged or if there is anything weird with the spring seat or perch.

as much as i'd LOVE for it to be caused by only tire wear. I dont want to ruin another $450 of winter tires to find out that something else was wrong.

[b1aze]

Oh I agree. I would want some pretty obvious proof of the cause and fix it. I wouldn't put a new set of tires on there until then.

[flinchy]

that shouldn't happen even if you have suspension issues, even when you change geometry, the wheel stays the same in relation to the strut, you should only rub with wrong offsets and widths.


judging by the actual tread worn, it looks like camber or hard driving

[RimasRS]

I think you have to big summers or wrong offset. It may be that with your winters you can drive w/o any problem... Alignment will not help here

[b1aze]

That's not to say that worn struts won't increase camber and camber wear a bit.

I am going to go back to my original thought that its just really well worn tires. If that's right on the edge of the tire belt, it might look just like that.

[fourtailpipes]

is that the outside or inside edge of the tire? outside edge would make sense for a camber-related failure, but you're suggesting that it might be the spring perch leads me to believe its the inside edge of the tire...?

if it's the inside, it cant really be the spring perch, because there should be no movement between the perch and the tire, as others have said, unless something is VERY wrong, in which case you wouldn't be complaining about your tire, but about the wild knocking sound coming from your barely-still-holding-together front suspension. a bad toe setting could cause extreme wear like this if it went unnoticed.

if its the outside edge, i'd be a little less surprised, as these cars maintain very little effective negative camber, and commonly refert to effective positive camber when loaded.

i should also note that this does look a bit like an underinflation failure to me. did you have your tpms installed? were they working? were they set to appropriate baseline pressures? i've seen a tire fail due to underinflation on a family member's car, and it looked really similar to this... the tire began to tear along the edge of the belt that was closest to the most worn area of the tire. as it began to tear, the heat built up and further softened the seam where the tire began to fail.

[Xyloft]

yup. stock 205/50R17's on the stock 128 sport package rims. somewhere between 55-60,000 miles on the tires. 76,000 miles on the car.

that's the inside lip on both fronts. I just took a tire pressure reading on one of them (off the car) and it was a only 20 psi. when i put them on in the spring, i put 36 psi in them and reset the TPMS, (I do this every time is swap the rims). so i guess this was possibly a slow leak that the TPMS wouldn't detect?

no pull on the steering, and no noticeable vibration.

[Lester]

This might just be alignment causing extreme tire wear. If there was that kind of rubbing, you would have heard it, felt it, smelled it and there would be evidence of rubbing on the suspension.

[Xyloft]

just to update: i had an alignment done, although the dealer didnt tell me how much they adjusted it. :/

but the winters are not showing any unusual wear patterns. So I'm guessing it was a combo of low tire pressure, worn tires, and possibly alignement.

[Gray_Panther]

Do you take a lot of hard left turns? Like maybe when entering the highway?

[Dackelone]

Originally Posted by Xyloft

just to update: i had an alignment done, although the dealer didnt tell me how much they adjusted it. :/

but the winters are not showing any unusual wear patterns. So I'm guessing it was a combo of low tire pressure, worn tires, and possibly alignement.

So... last year when you put on lowering springs you never had the car aligned?

[Boosted1]

This happened to me too. Its just the alligment. I didnt have the alligment done in 2 years, that and some hard driving result in this.

[Xyloft]

Originally Posted by Dackelone

So... last year when you put on lowering springs you never had the car aligned?

100% stock suspension. never lowered.

winters still seem fine.

[Guardian]

How old were the tires themselves? Car might only be four to five years old, but the tires could be older, having sat in the warehouse for a year or two before being installed. Old tires combined with hard driving and being out of alignment may have created this. Just a possibility.