I just wore out some Dunlop 9000's in 8000 miles on my 2003 A4 with the Sport suspension (FWD). My wife drives it, so it has mostly seen mudane around town driving with me occasionally flogging it. I decided to get some Sumitomo HTR ZIII's, and got an alignment from the shop that put on the tires. The Dunlops wereall worn out on the inside, the fronts to the steels belts, with one of those tires popping. The toe was out by a full degree on one front tire and over a half degreeon the other. The rears were out by a small amount, and the tires were much less worn.Myquestion is about the camber and how it will affect myhandling and tire wear. The camber is -1.6 and -1.2 on the fronts after the alignment, with the specs looking like they should be -.9 at most. Theextra negative camber makes me think the handling should be slightly better, but will it effect my tire wear to any significant degree (the rears are within spect at -1.5 and -0.9)? Theguy who did the alignment said the master tech would be in during the week and might be able to adjust the camber, but that he wasn't sure how to do it.

Thanks for any input.

 

You can only equalize the camber on the front of the car, since you have sport suspension the best you could hope for is about -1.3 on both sides. -1.3 degrees of camber shouldn't wear the tires that much, you should be able to get about 30-40k out of a set of tires, its the toe that really jacked up your dunlops.
The rears are independately adjustable, so those can both be around -1.0.

 

Thanks for the input. I knew the toe was the biggest reason my Dunlops are toast, I just wasn't sure if the extra negative camber would be a problem for tire wear. I told the guy the Sport suspension dropped the car almost an inch and may be the reason the camber was a bit more than the specs the machine spit out, which are probably for the base car.