Excessive tyre wear one side

[DArby]

Just noticed excessive wear to my offside front tyre.

 

The other tyre is still even, but this one is totally treadless on the outside edge for about 2-3 inches.

 

Cant believe i haven't noticed it before...

 

Is this solely down to tracking.

 

Northway were supposed to have done a full camber, 4 wheel alignment etc. in June when i put the tyre on and had it lowered.

 

I've now done just 2000 odd miles and have one totally sh*gged tyre.

 

Will tracking cure it, if i've got to cough out for 2 new tyres, i dont :

 

1. want to have to pay another £90 for 4 wheel alignment

2. Find the tyre gone again in a couple of 000 miles.

 

 

Dean.

[Doughie]

Dean

It sounds like tracking to me.   Or maybe that wheel has got POSITIVE camber dialled in on it.

 

Anyway, copied from another post, here is my opinion / experience of Northway tyres for anyone's benefit :

 

****

With regards to Northway, I got my alignment done there in October immediately after having my suspension lowered.

 

I gave them a printed spec sheet for them to set the values to (castor, camber, toe etc.)

They said it would take an hour to an hour and a half.

 

I timed them and they took 35 minutes for the whole thing and charged me £104 all in.    I was in a rush to get home and did not look carefully at the "before" and "after" geometry sheet.

When I did look carefully at it, i found that they had :

1) not done the front camber at all (was requested)

2) not done the castor at all (was requested)

3) Only changed one rear wheel's camber.    neither of the rear wheels' camber was set anywhere near to the specified value.

 

The only thing they did was the toe front and rear, and one rear wheel's camber.

 

I have done 700 miles on my s-02 PP's and both front and rear have worn over 1mm in that time due to excessive negative camber.    Tyres will be gone in 4000 miles.   And i don't generally drive it that hard.

 

SO, I rang up Northway and asked them (incognito) how much it would be the cost to have just the toe changed etc. (which they did) and they said "£76".   so then i revealed my situation and said "ok why then have you charged me £104 then, and you didn't do half the things i wanted.?"  

I todl them about the ridicuous wear on my tyres and said "I am coming down this w/e to get it sorted and you are not going to charge me".

The main bloke there put up no resistance and said he would do it himself personally at no cost.    

 

Conclusion:   I went along on a late Sat. afternoon and they thought "here's a 'rich' Supra owner, so it's an easy 100quid in half an hour and we really can't be arsed to do all the changes but he'll probably never check".    To give them their dues, this was probably jus the individual tyre monkey's attitude ("Darren") and is not necessarily indicate that Northway are dodgy or incompetent.

 

Anyway I was not impressed.

 

Micheldever tyres have a much better attitude IMO.    they will only do ONE car a day (only week-days) and will spend whatever time on it to get it exactly right.    The fact that they are now booked up solid for geometry re-alignment til January 2002 indicates that other people believe that they know their stuff.

 

All IMHO and in my personal experience.

****

 

[DArby]

Stu

 

Just dug out the results from the aligned (back in April)

 

Things that jump out at me.

 

CAMBER - Left (min -1.08 max 0.42) - Set -1.29

CAMBER - Right  (min -1.08 max 0.42) - Set -1.09

 

SAI ? - Left - (9.58) - Set 10.71

SAI ? - Right - (9.58) - Set 10.13

 

INCLUDED ANGLE - Left (9.25) - Set 9.40

INCLUDED ANGLE - Right (9.25) - Set 9.04

 

Could see nothing else untoward except Rear Thrust angle was -0.04 was set to -0.01

 

From the analogue print out got these Front readings

 

FROZEN CASTER - left 3.72 right 3.95 middle reading 0.23

CAMBER - left -1.27 right -1.09 middle reading 0.18

TOE - left 0.01 right 0.01 middle reading 0.02

 

Whether any of these reading are correct i have no idea - i had a good look round my tyres and noticed no significant wear to the front left, inner wear to the rear left, no significant wear to the rear right, absolutely f*cked to the front right.

 

I wonder how these results compare to yours.

 

 

Dean.

[Guest Ash]

 

 

SAI is Steering Axis Inclination.

 

For some useful info follow this link:

 

http://www.familycar.com/alignment.htm

 

HTH

 

Yours,

J

[Doughie]

Dean

 

None of the settings that you wrote in your post would explain why just one front tyre has huge wear on the outside edge.      You're running quite a lot of negative camber on the front tyres, but this would have the effect of increased wear on the INSIDE edge of the tyre (not the outside).

My advice is that it's just a possibility that one of the locking nuts for the suspension settings may have not been tightened properly and has worked loose, resulting in your right front tyre being way out of kilter.   I suspect it's either running *positive* camber OR maybe big amount of toe-in.    both of these would likely cause wear to the outside edge of a tyre.

 

The only other thing i can think of is that you've got a bent or mislocated suspension wishbone.     Have you clonked that wheel hard ?   kerbed it hard ?    run over some biggish debris at high speed?   just a thought.

Have your front suspension throughly re-checked to see if the readings are the same as they were last time.

 

On a happier note, yesterday I went back to Northway tyres in Watford to get my suspension geometry re-set as the did not do a thorough job last time by any means (see my previous post for details).     Wayne, the manager there, did it personally this time (at no charge given that it should have been right 1st time), spent a considerable amount of time on it (over 1.5hrs) and did an excellent job - setting everything exactly as i wanted.    Wayne's a good guy IMHO.    JB knows him too I believe.    

Just a slight shame the lazy sod who did it before (Darren i believe is the name on the sheet) didn't get it right.

 

So I have revised my opinion of Northway upwards !    They can do a very good job, but my advice would be to be very specific about the settings that you want, write them down, and insist on seeing the "before" and "after" settings print-out to make sure that they've done everything that you wanted.       Wayne is definitely the most knowledgeable bloke there when it comes to suspension so I'd advise that you insist he does it.

 

Below are my final settings that i got done yesterday.    Note that some of the settings (camber, principally) are a compromise between handling and tyre wear.     More negative camber *could* give you a little more grip when cornering hard BUT it will wear the inside edges of your tyres.    and they're S-02's so not cheap....

I went for slightly less negative front camber than Wayne would normally do as my last fronts wore badly on the inside edge and less camber should help ease that situation.

 

Anyway here they are :   (car lowered with Eibachs/Bilsteins) running 17" stock wheels with 255 rears and 235 fronts.   Note that this is in degrees ( ° ) and minutes ( ' ), where 60 minutes = 1 degree :

 

LEFT CASTER : 4°11'

RIGHT CASTER : 4°02'

 

FRONT LEFT CAMBER : -0°34'  (i.e. about half a degree negative)

FRONT RIGHT CAMBER : -0°32'

 

FRONT LEFT TOE : -0°01'

FRONT RIGHT TOE : -0°01'

 

LEFT SAI (Steering Axis inclination) : 9°46'

RIGHT SAI (Steering Axis inclination) : 9°34'

 

INCLUDED ANGLE (not sure to be honest what this is !) :

LEFT :  9°40'

RIGHT : 9°42'

 

 

REAR LEFT CAMBER : 1°16'

REAR RIGHT CAMBER : 1°11'

 

REAR LEFT TOE : 0°14'

REAR RIGHT TOE : 0°09'

 

THRUST ANGLE : 0°02'

 

Car felt great on the drive home. definitely felt better than it was.

I will report back on any handling / tyre wear consequences but i feel that this setup should hopefully be a good compromise on the handling / wear issue.

 

 

 

(Edited by Doughie at 3:02 pm on Dec. 2, 2001)