Alignment advice

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:39 pm

So I noticed why my tires got noisy on the Camaro.

The inside edges are feathering and there is noticeable tread wear also compared to the rear.

I had it set to -1/16" total toe up front and i'm at -2.1 camber as well. I didn't think camber should cause this too much, but will -1/16" toe cause this much wear and the feathering? Had performance chassis do the alignment about 5k miles ago. I guess it's possible it's been knocked out, I did VIR-N in April on this alignment as well as however many AutoX events there have been, plus normal daily driving.

The rear tires are wearing great which the back end also was set to -1/16", but only has -0.6 camber.

Aaron Buckley · **Posted:** Mon Jun 15, 2015 2:33 pm

Zero the toe. While it helps initial turn in, I don't think it would help enough to offset killing your street tires. You're right, camber doesn't kill tires, it's toe. - AB

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Mon Jun 15, 2015 3:02 pm

I'm running zero toe and 2 degrees neg camber w/ no issues on the street tires. Performance Chassis has always done alright by me....

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Mon Jun 15, 2015 4:06 pm

Cool, yeah the turn in is really nice but I didn't think the -1/16 toe would cause that much trouble, apparently I was wrong lol.

I don't have a separate set of tires currently so street tires are my track and autox tires lol, so the good news is the wear should get a bit evened out at the Jimmy V event with 2 drivers and 2 days.

I went ahead and rotated them also. This was the major plus of going squared, I couldn't rotate before with the staggered setup.

Bernie Baake · **Posted:** Mon Jun 15, 2015 7:07 pm

Cupping or scalloping is an indication of something wrong with your suspension IE wheel bearings, shocks, tire balance. springs etc. 2 degrees of camber will definitely cause the inside tire wear, especially if you use the car as your daily driver. Go to the attached website for more info.
http://www.procarcare.com/includes/cont ... ewear.html

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Tue Jun 16, 2015 9:07 am

They aren't scalloping, just feathered. Fairly certain it's the toe out that I had put in. While the turn is very nice, it's not worth my tires being toast in 10k miles when I should get 15-20k out of them. Also it's made them fairly noisy.

The suspension is all solid in the car, it's only got 50k miles on it and the struts are brand new up front, all the bushings are good also being only 6 years old.

Bernie Baake · **Posted:** Tue Jun 16, 2015 4:29 pm

Miss read the original post. But the web site is germane.

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Tue Jun 16, 2015 10:11 pm

The link is a nice super simple with pictures explanation, so I appreciate the link. It will likely be referred to in the future.

I actually contemplated a toe adjustment on my own, I suspect performance chassis will likely want to charge a full alignment to do just a small toe adjustment.

Might just pickup something like these toe plates, the plus side is Jessi's Jeep literally has a single adjustment in the suspension and it's toe, so it really bugs me to pay for a full alignment when they do a 1/3rd of the work, not to mention it's easily tall enough I can do everything without any lift.

http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/81680/10 ... gQodVFgA-w

I would assume the best practice with toe plates would be to adjust, move the car a bit and recheck the settings to let everything straighten out and settle. Or is it really better to just pay somebody to do this for me? My camber is maxed out in the front so the only other adjustment is the toe, I can't see too much harm in trying it myself.

Cash Davidson · **Posted:** Wed Jun 17, 2015 8:04 am

I haven't paid for an alignment on any of my cars in decades. For camber, I use a jig I made myself, a digital level and a bungee cord.

For toe, I use a toe gauge that attaches to the rim and reads in 1/16ths (sorry for the crappy flash photo).

I run -2.5deg all around, 1/16 toe-out at front and 1/32 toe-in at rear. Yes, after each adjustment you want to roll the car back and forth to relieve any bind in the tire tread and suspension bushings - it WILL make a difference.

I've run 1/16 toe-out on daily driven cars and never had a wear problem.

Cash

Keith Quistorff · **Posted:** Wed Jun 17, 2015 8:44 am

Chad Culbertson wrote:

I would assume the best practice with toe plates would be to adjust, move the car a bit and recheck the settings to let everything straighten out and settle. Or is it really better to just pay somebody to do this for me? My camber is maxed out in the front so the only other adjustment is the toe, I can't see too much harm in trying it myself.

Correct regarding best practice - I usually drive the car around the block between adjustments. Also important to measure with the car parked on a flat, relatively horizontal surface, i.e. center of garage floor. Definitely best option is to do this yourself - would be a waste to pay for an alignment if you only need a front toe adjustment - front toe is the simplest adjustment to measure on any car - rear can be a bit more challenging since there's no simple check for equal left/right rear toe, whereas the steering rack automatically equalizes the front toe.

Do it! You won't regret it.

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:19 am

Cool, thanks guys, my brother has a Garage at his apartment so perhaps i'm can convince him to let me do it there instead of my driveway.

I'm not sure if I can get under there well enough or not to adjust the tie rod end, but we'll see. Especially since i'm going to zero toe that should be the simplest lol.

I'm also just curious to see if it's gotten out of alignment, because I didn't think -1/16" would cause a lot of wear either. I'll probably just pickup the toe plates since my alloy wheels have no lip to clamp to like the pictured one above.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:45 pm

Cash Davidson wrote:

I haven't paid for an alignment on any of my cars in decades. For camber, I use a jig I made myself, a digital level and a bungee cord.

For toe, I use a toe gauge that attaches to the rim and reads in 1/16ths (sorry for the crappy flash photo).

Hey Cash, I'd like to learn more about how you do this. How do you make sure the wheels are pointed straight, relative to the steering wheel?

Something on the ST has slipped out of alignment between the Moultrie Match Tour two weekends ago and now. Car drives down the road pretty straight, but the steering wheel is off center, and that drives me crazy. I don't want to take the steering wheel off and "fix" it that way. And I'm not someone who can just live with it being crooked. :lol:

Anyway, I think it's time I learned how to do this myself. If for no other reason than I could at least figure out what happened when something like this occurs.

Cash Davidson · **Posted:** Fri Jun 19, 2015 6:49 pm

Karl Shultz wrote:

Hey Cash, I'd like to learn more about how you do this. How do you make sure the wheels are pointed straight, relative to the steering wheel?

Karl,

First, you need some thing to hold the steering wheel stationary as you make adjustments. You can use a fancy, commercially available one - or you can make a ghetto one like mine from a caulking gun and some steel rod.

I use my dad's old Bear toe gauge:

It clips onto the bottom edge of the rims and has a bubble level to get it set right:

And a very accurate gauge that reads each tire in inches or degrees:

I'll be adjusting the camber and toe on the Mazda in August for the Sept HPDE. You are welcome to come over.

Cash

Jordan Normark · **Posted:** Fri Jun 19, 2015 10:00 pm

When I was playing with alignments on the Miata, I used a string stretched between jack stands parallel to the side of the car to set toe. If the rear track is wider than the front, you will need to move the string closer to the rear hub by half the difference. If you wheel set-up is not square width wise, you'll have to do some more math or measuring...Or use two sets of strings, one on each side of the car and just make them parallel to each other. It takes some fiddling to get it set up, but works well.

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Thu Jul 09, 2015 8:50 am

Well, the source of the bad tire wear was likely found, my front had about a 1/4" of toe out on it, that's 4x what it had put into it from the start. We suspect this car has likely never had toe out so it's possible tie rods or something have stretched/settled into the new settings, none of them are worn out and the suspension is tight, so no other real explanation. Apparently it's somewhat common for cars when they get a toe out alignment for it to get wider initially and then they need a re-adjustment and then it will hold.

I guess we'll see if it holds now. The rear was off also, one side had some toe in, and the other side still had toe out. The odd thing about the front is that both sides maintained exactly the same setting, just more of it. The rear however one side was off compared to the other.

I decided just to swing by Performance Chassis since I needed the tire patched anyway and they didn't charge me for a full alignment anyway and it was cheaper than buying a set of toe plates, combined with I don't have a good place at home to play with it just decided to pay them. In the end it worked out better since the rear alignment was off and i'm not messing with that since adjusting camber affects toe and vice versa.

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