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RE: <E36> AutoX tire pressure over/understeer?

>Am I correct that by lowering the front tire pressures relative
>to the back by about 3-4psi I can reduce the understeer
>tendencies? 

Start by lowering the pressure in the front until you feel like the front is
sticking better.  Then adjust the rear.  At first don't worry about overall
feel ie. oversteer or understeer, concentrate on how well the front tires
are gripping and turning in. Once you get that set to where it works best
(note:  more than likely with a bone stock car, this still will not be the
ideal feel), then you can tune the rest of the car around that.  Once I have
the front set, I start with the rear at the same setting as the front, then
I adjust the rears by about 5 psi each direction from the front setting to
get a feel for what is happening; then make incremental adjustments from
there back toward the front. Obviously you can only do so much with tire
pressures, and I have found that the typical rules of thumb vary based on
tire manufacturer and model.  

>I would much prefer that the car oversteer
>slightly. I want to leave the car stock, so tires/pressure seem
>to be my only options.

The bad news is that tire pressure alone will not cure the understeering
nature of the E36.  With Eibach swaybars, front on full soft, and rear on
full hard, 17" Motorsport wheels and MXX3's and tire pressures of 36F/34r, I
get a pretty neutral feeling car through most of the course, that still
understeers slightly on really tight corners (mainly 180 deg. hairpins) and
has a nice lift throttle oversteer characteristic on decreasing radius
corners (Gee, now it feels about like my old E30 M3 right out of the box on
R1s!)  To get anymore oversteer characteristic out of the E36 takes much
more in suspension mods-mainly front camber and increased roll resistance
from springs.  Koni shocks help a lot too, but I haven't tried them yet.

Regards
Brian Bowden