Hello BMW World! I've had my E46 330i (CPO) for about a year now. I'll be doing my first DE event on July 5-6. Here's my question: My back tires are at 3/32" and 4/32". I know that I'm going to need to replace them. My fronts still have plenty of life left. (Due to staggered sizes, I can't rotate the tires.) I've been pretty happy with my Bridgestone RE040's. I see that Tire Rack has the Yokohama S.Drive for $75 less, each. So, I can get a higher rated tire, and save $150 when I replace my back tires! This sounds like a really good thing. Is it OK to just replace the rear's, or is it really important to keep all four tires matched? I look forward to reading your replies, because if there's one thing that "car people" do well is argue! Thanks in advance for your thoughts! MJ ---- 2004 E46 330i ZHP Silbergrau
Sure; when I had my 330Ci I replaced the rears before the front tires wore out. I typically stayed with the same brand. BMW's seem go through rear tires quicker than the fronts. Has to do with the alignment that makes them handle so well.
Like gepainter said, BMW's tend to eat up rear tires a lot faster than the fronts (depending on your driving style and number of track events you run), so it's not unusual to replace the rears only. Ideally, you would want to keep the same tire front and rear because they will have similar handling charactersitics that way. By going to a different brand tire front and rear, you will get different limits of adhesion and the way the tires break away will be different. Under normal conditions, you would never notice the difference but it may become obvious at the DE when you start to approach the tire's limits. You should be fine with it, you just need to keep it in mind at the track (and tell your instructor about it so he knows to explore the limits a little more gradually). That's just my opinion, There will probably be plenty of others!
