Then it seems you corner harder than I do, which is why it wears better for you. Perhaps the H-Sport control arms are in my future.
I'm thinking cupping is more of a not rotating the tires issue or a rear toe issue. Negative camber wears the inside edges of the tires.
My tires in the rear looked like they do now after 5000 miles when one would rotate their tires, I rotated them and after a few days of driving especially on the freeway, the steering was dangerously squirrely as if my tires had a mind of their own. I had to constantly course correct steering, you know when your tire finds the grooves and cracks in the road following them as if they were railroad tracks. That's how bad it was.
I haven't commented on my Michelin Pilot Super Sports (205/45/ZR17), the car definitely feels like I'm glued to the road, is much quieter ride. The bumps are smoother, I like not having to feel every rock or imperfections in the road. How many of you carry a spare tire while driving on non-run flats? I would also need to replace the horribly unsafe OEM jack, it's only safe on perfectly flat surfaces and it's not like we have a patch of road picked out foe when we get flat tires?
Slime fix-a-flat.... Your best traveling companion.... Don't need to use the oem jack... Less than $20.00, from a Walmart near you... MINI also sells their "Mobility Kit", similar to the Slime.... Except you also get a pair of gloves.... Amazon.com: Genuine MINI Cooper Tire Mobility Kit: Automotive
Take all of the following as friendly advice - not here to preach... just share some experiences. IMO, MINIs are spec'd with WAY too much rear camber. It's done to prevent oversteer "at all costs"... which is ridiculous in these cars, because oversteer is a feature when they're setup right. All mainstream manufacturers configure their cars for understeer, so they "push" when going "too fast" into a corner, which makes you instinctively slow down. I guess that's OK for teenagers and people who put on their makeup and text while driving... but for the rest of us, it's just an impediment. The run flats are notorious for wearing in weird and unpredictable ways. Especially on the rear. With that much rear camber, the inside half of the tire carries almost all the load on a properly inflated run-flat. When under inflated, the inner sidewall and edge carry almost all the load. And unless you're diligent about checking pressures with an actual gauge, you're likely to drive around on under inflated run flats, because you can't tell they're low by looking at them or putting your thumb in the sidewall. FWIW, I run -2.1 front / -1.0 rear camber. Not a setup I recommend for everyone, and not even possible with the factory hardware. But it makes a MINI handle the way they all should, IMO. As for jacks... wheel chocks are your friends. I've used screw/scissor jacks a zillion times with no problem, as long as the wheels were chocked / car was immobilized. No jack is safe without these steps. Buy a pair of cheap wheel chocks and keep them with the jack.
My only question is how can you live in OC and run on some of the great roads out there? I recommend 74 (Ortgea) to start. I would go west in the morning and east in the evening.
Systemlord, cupping like that is probably a toe problem, camber tends to wear evenly on the inside. I found that the only real cure is to rotate frequently, if you're in spec. on the alignment. BTW, to get the degree symbol, just go to the character map..... As to getting "ripped off" by the dealer.....really? A good alignment from pretty much any tire store around here is at least $100 - getting it done right the first time by your dealer for only $40 more hardly seems like a rip off, especially given what you paid for the Michy's, mounted and balanced. You get what you pay for......
+1 for MINIDave's post......and I will add that you should get the control arm bushings checked as that can cause some weird tire wear. I run -1.5 degrees of rear camber with -1.9 front and get very even wear on my tires. You might want to start shopping for some adj. lower control arms so the alignment shop can get the rear camber where it needs to be.
At some point I will buy a set of H-Sport Control Arms, but with the stock setup and me wanting better tire wear, a negative camber of -1.4 will be done tomorrow. If I feel that a negative camber of 1.0 is sufficient I'll go for a set of H-Sport Control Arms. I want to set down gradually from -1.7 - -1.4 and then -1.0, by the time I'm done with doing that I'll know what works best for me. Thank you for all the helpful feedback!
Does no one read what I write? Systemlord, I teach steering and suspension at college, and I've been working on cars for over 30 years. What you have is not a camber problem, it's a toe problem. If you want to play with camber to experiment with handling by all means, please do - but your wear isn't coming from that as I and a couple others wrote.
Toe is adjusted via bracket #7.... Shops not familiar with MINI's may not know the location of this adjustment..... They may not admit that they don't know how to adjust the rear toe on a MINI.... Just saying....
I'd also look into the toe-in setting. Too much toe in (even if it's "within spec") sure can cause wear issues on the rear. Zero rear toe or maybe 1/16" total toe-in goes a long way to improving rear tire wear, even with a bunch of negative camber. Jason
I also run zero toe in the rear with about -1.6 camber and the tires wear OK. I run -2.0 camber in the front with slight toe-out.
I got my alignment done today by the owner of a shop that knows how to align BMW and Mini Coopers. He did tell me that Camber doesn't affect tire wear as much as Toe-in/outs, my left rear tire had a Toe-out to 0.01, specified range .13-.27 degrees. He indeed told me after looking at my tire that it had been over inflated as many of you have already stated. I guess I just need to recheck my alignment every 6 months, it's free.