New Tires for 4.8is- Has anyone tried the Continental Extreme Contact DWS's?

[Repoman]

Absolutely! Regardless of what tire you get, the stock rear camber settings are going to wear the rears unevenly (inside first). Now some tires may take it better than others but physics cannot be disproved, it is a fact. Other factors are what size tires you have and if they are rotatable (is that a word?). I have the staggered 19" which are not rotatable. If you have the same size all around, you can compensate for premature inner rear wear by moving them to the front for a while. On any set-up however, the only way to keep the rears from wearing unevenly is to get the rear camber set as close to 0 as possible (adjustment linkage may not allow perfect 0). There is a huge thread recently about is 0 camber possible, I would read it to understand further.

You will lose some of your "BMW" handling qualities by doing this but it is an SAV, not a Ferrari. Besides, tire wear is more important to me than sports car handling and you can't have both 100% unfortunately.

I thought I got a great deal on the Toyo Proxes and they look sick. After about 3,000 miles they started getting really loud on the highway. Negative camber was completely to blame and the wear pattern created knobs on the inside of the tread like a mud tire almost. I rebalanced them and straightened up the rear camber as much as I could and presto, no noise. No noise for a long time now and wearing evenly.

Hope this helps!

Had to edit to add Disclaimer: Negative camber is designed as an anti-roll feature by BMW so adjusting it out of the intended spec will affect the anti-roll characteristics of the vehicle. This should be considered if doing so. Better handling is just a side-effect of the anit-roll feature (negative rear camber).