too much positive camber

[hoarker15]

My '84 325e has too much positive camber in the front, as my front tires are wearing badly on the outsides. I have had my car for almost 3 months and already have worn one of the tires to the steel belt. I have a couple of friends who work at a tire shop, so I was able to get a used pair of temp. replacements for now. What I want to know is what are my options on correcting this.

I know BMP has a camber correction plate ($180 a pair) that will add .5 degrees of negative camber, and another suspention website that has adjustable camber plates ($300 a pair) that will add up to 4.5 degrees of negative camber. Now I want to buy a new H&R cup kit ($600), and don't want to spend the extra $300 on camber plates if I don't have to. Does anyone know of a cheap and effective way to solve this problem?
Thanks,
Sterling

[Guy Caballero]

Is your car drastically lowered? If so putting it back to close to stock height will remedy the situation and improve front end traction.

[hoarker15]

No my car has the stock suspension still on it, but I'm about to get the H&R cup kit wich will lower it about 2 inches.
Having the stock suspension (very soft and lots of body roll) might be adding to the wear of the tires when I take corners fast, but I wouldn't think that in less than 3 months it would wear down the outside of my tires all the way to the steal belt. So I'm sure that when I add the new stiffer suspension it will reduce some of the wear on the edge of my front tires, but I still want to get rid of the positive camber.

[Guy Caballero]

Hmm... Have you had your alignment checked? If so what are the static (vehicle at rest) camber readings? If you look at the car from the front and the top of the tires are obviously tilted outwards and the alignment shop cannot improve the situation I would guess that there is something worn in your front suspension. Perhaps Jared can suggest some places to look.

I'm assuming that '84 3 series still had strut front suspensions. If this is the case, keep in mind that lowering your car 2" will likely worsen your problem. As the front suspension compresses, the tires gain negative camber until the outside edge of the contol arm reaches level with the inside connection points. Once it goes above that, the tires move towards positive camber. In short, drastically lowering strut supsensioned cars is usually counterproductive since the loss of negative camber greatly reduces tire contact patch and thus loss of traction.