Wheel Alignment - Odd Tyre Wear

[JohnL]

Camber (within reason) on it's own isn't a huge generator of tyre wear, but add significant toe to significant camber and the wear multiplies (i.e. camber X toe creates a lot more wear than toe or camber on their own).

You may get reasonable wear on both tyres even if you have unequal camber but with zero toe. However, if you have uneven camber as well as significant toe then the tyre with more camber will most probably wear a lot faster than the other tyre.

[gbang007]

yeh i checked mine and i have real bad uneven wear. done about 15,000-20,000km on proxes 4 and the front inner shoulder is pretty much bald. all the rest looks perfectly fine, like new but the two front inner shoulders are bad. time for new tires. im on 17's for an ek. had a wheel alignment when i got the wheels put on but nothing since. would they be able to tell me if it was out? i haven't been thrashing it or anything. its lowered too. by about 1.5".

[chargeR]

What do you guys think I should do? Just keep rotating my tyres? Does it really cost that much to get a camber kit setup properly?

I agree with JohnL, if you make sure you toe is set correctly (zero at the front) then the small amount of camber you have should not cause any tyre wear problems especially if you are religious with your tyre rotation. Camber on its own causing significant tyre wear is a myth, as JohnL mentions.

[bennjamin]

yup TOE is the main culprit for tyre wear.

Keep rotating tyres , keep your tyre pressure checked and up and get an alignment once in awhile Tyres should last a long time

[tknova]

I've got a quick question re honda accord euro wheel algnment

I'm running -1 camber & 0.00m toe on the front wheels and getting great tyre wear

The rear tyres are running -3 camber & 0.00 toe and getting a very bad feathering effect on the inside of the rear tyres.

I have an ingall rear camber kit but cannot make the camber any more positive or i'll hit the rear 1/4 panels,

I'm happy to live with the accelrated camber wear but the feathering makes the tyres extremely loud.

What's the best toe setting i should run with -3 camber to stop the feathering effect?


CHeers !

[aaronng]

I've got a quick question re honda accord euro wheel algnment

I'm running -1 camber & 0.00m toe on the front wheels and getting great tyre wear

The rear tyres are running -3 camber & 0.00 toe and getting a very bad feathering effect on the inside of the rear tyres.

I have an ingall rear camber kit but cannot make the camber any more positive or i'll hit the rear 1/4 panels,

I'm happy to live with the accelrated camber wear but the feathering makes the tyres extremely loud.

What's the best toe setting i should run with -3 camber to stop the feathering effect?

CHeers !

For the rear, I've had good toe but camber was -3 and it still wore the inside. What are the offset of your rims? You should roll your guards or raise your car up or get rims with a higher offset if you want to get the camber back to spec.

[tknova]

For the rear, I've had good toe but camber was -3 and it still wore the inside. What are the offset of your rims? You should roll your guards or raise your car up or get rims with a higher offset if you want to get the camber back to spec.

I'm got a 19 inch wheel with a +45 offset

I'm going to lip the rear guard to try and suqqze a little bit more positive camber out.

The accelrated inside tyre wear (camber) i'm happy to deal with, it's just the feathering (been told is due to toe setting) which makes the rear tyres sound like 4x4 tires (feathering effect)

I've read that toe is the main culprit for feathering,

As stated i', running 0.00m toe on the rear, i now understand i should be running atleast -1or -2 toe,

But, running with -3 camber, should i run a different toe setting to stop the feathering? or run at -1m -2m toe as recommended.

The only problem i see, is that i'm running 0 toe on the rear at the moment. Abd the feathering is very bad, the rear tyre on the inside has now got a 'wave' effect.

I have a feeling that -1 or -2 worth of toe will not fix this? or will it fix the problem?

Ohh yeh, for best tire wear should you run -1 or -2 toe? or is 0 toe on the rear going to get back tire wear?

Help is appricated!

Cheers

[aaronng]

Your rear is meant to be +1mm toe in on each side! Not toe out by -1mm.

What is the width of the rims and the tyre size?

[eg5civic]

Does the +1mm of toe on the rear effect how much they wear the tyres would get.. as in increase the rate of wear or is it more drastic like +2 or +3mm that cause excessive wear

[aaronng]

Does the +1mm of toe on the rear effect how much they wear the tyres would get.. as in increase the rate of wear or is it more drastic like +2 or +3mm that cause excessive wear

Not sure about other cars, with the Euro, it comes with +1mm toe in (total toe in +2mm) and -1 degree camber on the rear as stock. With this setup, the rear wears evenly and slower than the front tyres, which have 0mm toe in (or up to +2mm toe in depending on where you do your alignment) and 0 degrees camber.

[tknova]

Your rear is meant to be +1mm toe in on each side! Not toe out by -1mm.

What is the width of the rims and the tyre size?

19x8, 45+ offset, running on 235/35/19'.

Would be awesome if you could post up the recommended specs for me aaronng. I'll print it out and give to the wheel alignment guys to check out.

[JohnL]

Camber on its own causing significant tyre wear is a myth, as JohnL mentions.

Well, IMO, yes and no. If you run a lot of neg camber then inner edge wear is bound to be greater (I'd suggest 3° is a lot of camber for a road car, and especaially for a Honda fitted with double wishbone suspension).

It's not only toe that can multiply camber related wear, if you habitually accelerate hard and brake hard then the inner edges of the front tyres will wear more quickly, especially with wider tread and/or lower profile and/or higher inflation pressure (and/or more camber, of course). This may especially be so with a lot of hard braking with associated forward weight transfer to the (already heavily loaded with FWD) front wheels and associated nose dive.

Hard braking generates the highest forces and wear per second that the tyres will typically ever see (with the exception of gratuitous wheelspin). Due to neg camber gain with suspension bump motion, nose dive under hard braking further increases dynamic neg camber (just when the treads are seeing their highest loadings) and thus camber wear. This problem increases inner edge wear, but also decreases front wheel grip under brakes (not good), and is greater with double wishbone suspensions than with Mac struts because with double wishbone the front wheels will gain a lot more neg camber with nose dive than will Mac struts (i.e. double wishbone suspensions typically gain a lot more neg camber in bump than do Mac struts). So, with double wishbone suspensions it's a good idea to avoid excessive static camber (there are other reasons too why a lot of static neg camber isn't a good idea, to do with cornering and tractive grip generated - or not- at the inside front contact patch).

Typically, cars (including many Hondas) with double wishbone suspensions ('short / long arm', or SLA suspension) don't need nearly as much static neg camber as cars fitted with Mac struts. Mac struts tend to suffer from a very poor camber curve, i.e. they don't gain nearly enough neg camber with bump motion, and this equates to too little camber gain in roll so the outside front wheel tends to run at excessive pos camber in roll, unless a lot of static neg camber is used (which adversely affects front wheel grip in acceleration and braking, i.e. large neg camber settings aren't a 'good thing' in all areas of chassis dynamics, instead being a compromise for a compromised design).

Also, due to design constaints Mac struts tend to have way too much KPI (i.e. inward lean of the steering axis), which creates a steered pos camber gain at the outside front wheel (i.e as the outside front wheel is turned into the corner it gains pos camber, more so with greater KPI), so more static neg camber is required to counteract this.

SLA suspensions tend to have less KPI and generally require less static neg camber to compensate for both KPI and camber curve because both camber curve and KPI are typically much better than with Mac struts.

These problems can be so bad with Mac struts that in some racing applications Mac struts can have not only quite severe static camber angle but also absolutely huge amounts of caster angle (I've heard of up to 20° of caster in some touring car categories!!!) designed in to counteract the Mac strut problems of poor camber curve and excessive KPI.

The moral of the story is that you shouldn't run large camber angles on an SLA suspended car just because you see a lot of racing sedans run large camber angles. Nearly all of those cars will have Mac stut front suspensions and thus will require substantial static camber angles (to compensate for the shortcomings of the Mac strut design) that would most probably be counter-productive for cars with a good SLA design (read many Hondas).