Did tire installer screw up alignment?

About 2.5 years ago I replaced the original scorpion tires on my 05 x3. The lasted almost 65k miles.

I bought yoko avid Envigor. I usually rotate my tires but the tires appeared to be wearing even so I left them alone

Anyway the other day I parked with the wheels turned and noticed the inside edge of the front tires were worn excessively. I assume the tire installer messed up the camber. The replacement was done at a fairly large local tire chain. I have 90k miles now. Looks like I will be lucky to get 35k miles out the tires. I rotated them last weekend (same side). Next time I will not get direction al tires

You cant adjust front camber with stock setup without going out of the norm .... have you checked the control arms bushings? They may have gotten sloppy causing unwanted tire movement.

Control arm bushings are notorious for going bad; I replaced the ones on my E46 by 55k miles. I don't know if the design is shared with the E83 though.

Originally Posted by bluskye

You cant adjust front camber with stock setup without going out of the norm .... have you checked the control arms bushings? They may have gotten sloppy causing unwanted tire movement.

No can I check them myself? I guess I'll have to bring it in somewhere

Toe in/out can also cause excessive tire wear on the inner or outer edge of the tire(s), and it doesn't have to be off by much to cause premature tire wear. It's pretty easy to knock toe out of spec.

I am hoping its a problem with the toe in adjustment. Next the I am going to take it to a local Indy mechanic. I just checked their website and they do tire installs through tire rack.

Do you think my problem has anything to do with the fact I installed passenger car tires versus SUV/truck tires? I never take the x3 off road so I figured the yoko's would be good

Don't blame our tyre installer...unless he did wheel alignment at the same time. Tyre changing, wheel rotation etc don't mess the alignment at all. Bu potholes, pavement curbing and normal tear and wear ruin wheel alignment. Hence it's a good idea to do a wheel alignment check once a yera, or at the worst every two years. Especially, if the car starts ageing it is more prone to bad alignment since the different suspension parts tend to accumulate a lot of stress, so in order to save money on your tires, it's a must to check alignment every year.

Originally Posted by ioannis214

Don't blame our tyre installer...unless he did wheel alignment at the same time. Tyre changing, wheel rotation etc don't mess the alignment at all. Bu potholes, pavement curbing and normal tear and wear ruin wheel alignment. Hence it's a good idea to do a wheel alignment check once a yera, or at the worst every two years. Especially, if the car starts ageing it is more prone to bad alignment since the different suspension parts tend to accumulate a lot of stress, so in order to save money on your tires, it's a must to check alignment every year.

When I replaced the tires I had the installer do a 4 wheel alignment and paid extra for a Hunter Road force balance. Maybe they are not familer with BMWs. I had them do my Acura MDX the year before and those tires are wearing great.

Actually I brought the X3 there because they fixed a screw-up balance job NTB (another local installer) did on the MDX after I bought new tires there.

I called the tire dealer. Didn't really expect anything but they said sounded like an alignment problem. They said I should be bringing it in every 6 months to have the alignment checked. Yeah right, wouldn't they like that. How come the original tires lasted 5 years/65k miles on the factory alignment? I would have been better off if I had them only mount the tires. I'm sure however was working on the car did there best to demonstrate the need for an alignment.

Just venting.

I think that a brand new car, since it's brand new, has all suspension components in perfect condition. Over the years and as miles accumuate and suspension takes pounding and abuse etc etc some strain on different parts accumulates hence some ever so minor bending on suspension components, softening of bushes etc, some lowering of springs and shocks, some body flex.... Add all that up and some minor geometry occurr. But it's more noticeable as the car ages, since all those components take the pounding over the yeras. Then it's always amatter of that being lucky to hit that pavement kurb or deep pothole that you didn't see and hought it didn't do any damage etc, which when your car was new you oayed so much attention to avoid that now 7 years down the road don't even notice.

I was so unlucky that i did wheel allignment 7 months ago, hit a pothole 2 months later and finally got myself around to do it again 2 weeks ago and it was off, of course! My suggestion to you is taphat if you drive on well surfaced roads and do average mileage or lower check the alignment once a year or 18 months. But if you do high mileage and bad road conditions or do off-roading, the do it every 8-12 months max. You can pick up quite a few suspension problems early on by a good wheel allignment center and save a lot of money on ruining tires, i had brand new set of tires a gew years ago on an e30, that had a serious alignment problem but nobody could detect that ruined my tires in 6 months time, to such an extent that the vibration i wiuld get in the car, because the tires got bend in such a way, that I had to buy new ones. So, wheel alignment every tme i install new tires and feel that something might be off.

Originally Posted by ioannis214

I think that a brand new car, since it's brand new, has all suspension components in perfect condition. Over the years and as miles accumuate and suspension takes pounding and abuse etc etc some strain on different parts accumulates hence some ever so minor bending on suspension components, softening of bushes etc, some lowering of springs and shocks, some body flex.... Add all that up and some minor geometry occur. But it's more noticeable as the car ages, since all those components take the pounding over the years. Then it's always matter of that being lucky to hit that pavement curb or deep pothole that you didn't see and thought it didn't do any damage etc, which when your car was new you payed so much attention to avoid that now 7 years down the road don't even notice.

I was so unlucky that i did wheel alignment 7 months ago, hit a pothole 2 months later and finally got myself around to do it again 2 weeks ago and it was off, of course! My suggestion to you is that if you drive on well surfaced roads and do average mileage or lower check the alignment once a year or 18 months. But if you do high mileage and bad road conditions or do off-roading, the do it every 8-12 months max. You can pick up quite a few suspension problems early on by a good wheel alignment center and save a lot of money on ruining tires, i had brand new set of tires a few years ago on an e30, that had a serious alignment problem but nobody could detect that ruined my tires in 6 months time, to such an extent that the vibration i would get in the car, because the tires got bend in such a way, that I had to buy new ones. So, wheel alignment every time i install new tires and feel that something might be off.

Good advice.
Also Scorpions are known to last very long and the car was new. When bushings and other suspension parts start to get lose, you need to align the car at least once a year/15k miles.