camber crap

[MysteriousXTC]

its obvious the camber is out in the pictures but it doesn't look extremely bad in my opinion... the angle on the axles looks to be much more than mine, but i do only have 1.5" blocks.... maybe do some 1.5 inch blocks and increase the angle to around 20 and see if that helps...

[Numbchux]

that looks to me more like wear caused by toe-in.

 

there really isn't an accurate way to tell without the right equipment, so ideally it should be taken to a shop.

 

BUT, you can get it fairly close with a tape measure. measure the track width from the same place (be it on the rim, or an obvious point on the tread that is the same all the way around the tire). once on the front side of the tire, and once on the back.

 

they should be fairly close. a hair (I shoot for ~1/4" on stockish sized tires. but it'll be more with larger tires) less on the front than the back.

[Log1call]

Here is how it works....

 

Wheel rims have off-set to centre the load on the bearings. If you had flat rims the outer bearing would suffer.

Camber and king-pin inclination work together with rim offset to prevent wheel scuff. If the wheels were vertical the tyre would have to swing in a circle on the ground which would cause wear and effort. With all three things set right the tyre should pivot right in it's centre.

Toe-in is to overcome the wheels natural tendency to roll to one side under the influence of the camber. If you lean a tyre over and roll it along the ground it will steer off to one side.

Caster is just to give a self centering effet.

[bratman18]

Yeah, toe them babies out a touch and it should help a lot. When you simply drop the strut, the natural suspension droop causes the tires to point in a little, so toe them back out a little and it should help

[coxy]

Here is how it works....

 

Wheel rims have off-set to centre the load on the bearings. If you had flat rims the outer bearing would suffer.

Camber and king-pin inclination work together with rim offset to prevent wheel scuff. If the wheels were vertical the tyre would have to swing in a circle on the ground which would cause wear and effort. With all three things set right the tyre should pivot right in it's centre.

Toe-in is to overcome the wheels natural tendency to roll to one side under the influence of the camber. If you lean a tyre over and roll it along the ground it will steer off to one side.

Caster is just to give a self centering effet.

 

Castor makes a huge difference to wheel camber on lock and hence cornering ability not just self centreing,Toe in or Toe out is mainly to allow correct geometry under real world load useage,a front wheel drive will tend to pull the wheel and suspension forwards pivoting around the lower control arm pivot point hence requires either zero or slight toe out so it doesn't toe in too much which causes unstable behaviour under power or brakes

The geometry of vehicles is rather important when for instance you look at the camber of the outside wheel of say a brat or hatch on full lock , you see extreme positive camber which causes much understeer.

This is directly because of a lack of enough positive caster does not give an ideal camber setting of some negative camber on full lock without the tradeoff of to much initial negative camber in the straight ahead mode which makes for directional instability in the srtaight ahead position and excessive wear of the tyre's inner tread.

Positive camber as many with lifted Subes creates it's own problems of tyre wear and Excessive understeer this is why you have to remember suspension works in an Arc around it's pivot points when evaluating cause and effect with suspension changes

[Txakura]

^^^

 

my car is already obnoxious with it's understeer, if I lift it, it's going to get worse?

[Txakura]

Positive camber as many with lifted Subes creates it's own problems of tyre wear and Excessive understeer this is why you have to remember suspension works in an Arc around it's pivot points when evaluating cause and effect with suspension changes

 

my car is already obnoxious with it's understeer, if I lift it, it's going to get worse?

[ferox]

Yeah, toe them babies out a touch and it should help a lot. When you simply drop the strut, the natural suspension droop causes the tires to point in a little, so toe them back out a little and it should help

I have had this same problem. '81 hatch, no lift, 185 70r13's. When I got a new set of tires (rated for 100,000 miles) about 18,000 miles ago I had an alignment done at the same time(this is all Les Schwab). The outside edges in front started to wear, so they comped me a new tire. Another tire went, so they comped me another and I had another alignment. Then both fronts started wearing on the outside even worse. They were finished in about 2,000 miles. So I just got back from having them recheck their alignment. Somehow they had towed-in my wheels about 30% more than the highest point of the spec. range!? So they realigned them to the lowest point of the tow-in spec range and replaced to two remaining original tires. Long story to say that excessive tow-in on my rig created the exact same wear problem.