Re: Question to owners of Sport package (archive)

I have a '99 740iL (though not a Sport version, which shouldn't make much of a difference). My tires have about 19,000 miles on them, and show very little uneven wear. I believe I can get another 30,000 out of them. A BMW service rep did point out slight cupping on the outer edge of the front tires about 6 months ago, so I had the car alligned.

As far as allignment, tire wear is a good indicator of poor allignment. In many cases, you will not notice bad allignment by the way the car handles.

I have 9K miles on my 2001 740iL sport. I've noticed the front tires wear much more rapidly on the outside 1/4 of the tread width. Wear pattern looks like too much toe-in. My front tires look like they could do a total of 15K miles except for the outsides which have only a few thousand miles left. I asked the dealer about it and he says all 7 series wear that way due to the weight of the car. He said he's happy to re-align it, but since the cars drive perfectly I've declined. I looked at many 7 series in the past 3 weeks and it looks like all are wearing the way mine are. I'm almost religious about air pressure, so that's not it. I do run the pressure suggested for max vehicle loading (32psi instead of 29psi) to try to slow it down.

Are you others experiencing this kind of wear? If not, should I have it realigned, I hate to do that and end up with the car drifting to the left or right, or the steering wheel not centered...joe

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