Tire rotation - track use
 

Hey all,


Amateur track enthusiast here.



I currently have hankook rs4's on my BRZ which have lasted about 10 track days thus far but they are certainly showing wear. Typically the outside edges get wrecked pretty quickly from all the cornering. My question is, do ya'll typically rotate the tires to extend their life? I do rotate my tires on my daily driver mazda3 but just wondering what people do for their track tires. Which way do you rotate them? Front to back, inside out?

Outside wear is a sign that you don't have enough camber in your suspension setup. Rotating the tires is unlikely to improve that specific wear problem.
- One way you can get more life from edge wear is to unmount and flip the whole tire on the wheel, however that's not a tire rotation.

In any case, as far as traditional rotation, I rotate my tires after every event. I dont pay too much attention to whether the course is run CW or CCW. I figure it evens out over time anyway. Again, this is mostly to even-out lifetime wear rather than necessarily getting additional life out of a tire. Naturally if you kept the same tires in the front the whole time, the fronts will wear out faster than the rears

If the tires are inside-outside, I just do a rear cross rotation. If the tires are directional, I just do a front to rear.

Inside or outside wear doing a normal rotation will not help. Your tires are directional so you will need to dismount the tires and put the left tires on the right side and right tires on the left side.

I how much camber do you have? Sounds like you need more as stated above.

Rotating does extend their life. The fronts see more camber wear due to the mac strut design having little to no camber gain. The rears have some camber gain, but without enough camber will still wear the outsides more. I swap front to rear after each track day. Once they are getting to the end of the life I will flip sides, even them being directional, to get the last little bit out of them.

I added camber bolts up front to achieve -1.8 but the rear is still stock camber and I'm not sure what it is but it ain't much. I was told I needed to get control arms for the rear in order to get some camber.

Front is usually where you get the most camber wear as most of the cornering load for the car is in the front (and the suspension geometry doesn't add inherent camber like the rear does).

• If your car is lowered at all, it will gain natural camber (something like 1 inch drop will give you -2 deg at the rear). At the stock height, the rear has about -1 deg from the factory. In any case, the front-to-rear camber set-up you currently have (~-1.8F to ~-1 R) is roughly proper for the balance of the car.

-1.8 front camber is generally not enough for optimal track-related wear. The generally agreed-upon front camber level for track tends to be -3.0 or more (both for maximizing grip and reducing outside camber wear).

However, if you daily your car, driving on the street everyday over time on a track-oriented alignment will lead to the opposite problem: accelerated tire usage due to camber wear on the inside edge

How do I deal with having too much wear on the inside and outside edges of the tires while the main tread is totally fine?

It's hard to say without knowing more about your specific set-up and usage, but having both too much inside and outside wear is generally a sign of an underinflated tire (tire pressure too low)

Tire pressures are high. Low 40s. I think I just drive it hard.

Fronts get used up way more quickly than rears, even with decent front camber. I rotate with this method at the track: Arrange tires in order of most to least worn on the outside edge. Put least worn tire on the outside front, next least-worn inside front, most worn on inside rear, next most-worn outside rear.

I also notice at higher camber numbers it drags off the inside edge of the inside tire on long high load corners. Damn mac strut. Some of local tracks here are CCW but with some long right sweepers and they really tear up both sides of the front right tire.

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