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Old 05-01-2011, 04:41 PM   #21 (permalink)
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Exalta - that is exactly what I meant. I am considering it for sure!


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Old 05-01-2011, 09:48 PM   #22 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by moorecomp View Post
You bought the car in January, I would bet the previous owner rotated the tires front to back and the problem is in the rear as said in the TSB.
Brilliant. Worth watching out for. Easy to test with chalk or white shoe polish across the tread on the fronts and rears.
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Old 05-02-2011, 10:28 AM   #23 (permalink)
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Check to see if you need an alingment done That wear patter looks verry familure as my parents 98 Astro had the same problem dose the car pull to one side slightly? You may not notice but if it dose your correcting the stearing to make the car drive strait and speeding up the tire whear.
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2 cars one never gets driven the other is an MPG project already at 5% increase in standard driving economy CAI and Pulstar plus. Thinking weight reduction next year.
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Old 05-02-2011, 05:55 PM   #24 (permalink)
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Negative camber on its own is not a bad thing; it helps grip in cornering. It will not cause the kind of wear you are seeing, except if the tires are something like 20 degrees off vertical. Usually that sort of wear is seen when a reasonable amount of negative camber is combined with a bunch of toe out.

Toe-out makes the car somewhat twitchy; it will want to change directions very rapidly.

I would not necessarily recommend replacing rubber bushings with hard polyurethane unless you don't mind squeaking and a rougher ride. The squeaking can be fought with lubrication, but that only works for so long.

Also, some cars (like late-80s Civics and their derivatives) require more compliance in some bushings than the poly can give. I don't know your car well enough to say if there are any, but if there are bushings on joints that move in more than one axis those probably should stay rubber.

A good alignment shop should be able to tell you what is going on, including any bad bushings or worn tie rods.

-soD
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Old 05-03-2011, 11:47 AM   #25 (permalink)
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Back from getting new front tyres and an alignment.

My wheels should be toed in by 1.5mm according to the shop guy (+\-1mm) and they were at 0mm and 2mm toe out. I had that fixed - both are around 1mm toe in now. It could be me, but the car seems less twitchy and doesn't pull at all!

I saw a reasonable camber on the wheel. I am not sure what to expect to see - I know there should be some. Any way I can measure it? I will be back in the shop so I can maybe ask them when I get the uniroyals in. I should have taken a picture for you folks!

Is front camber tricky to adjust? Will I offset the alignment of the wheels if I have a go at it? Shims or something? Back wheels look straighter.

Cheers for all the help so far!
Mike
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Old 05-03-2011, 06:55 PM   #26 (permalink)
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I don't know how the Focus adjusts the camber. It may not be possible without replacing parts; a lot of modern cars are set up like that. There may be "crash bolts" that are intended to give some adjustment for cars that have been in a collision and are slightly tweaked. Or it may be as simple as loosening the bolts that hold the top of the strut onto the chassis of the car and pushing the strut into its new position. (Some older cars work that way.) Or shims being added or removed, as you say.

Camber is easy to measure if you have a level or a plumb bob and a measuring tape, an angle finder, or (best yet!) a digital angle finder. It is simply the angle that the top of the tire leans inward (negative camber) or outward (positive camber). The stock specs are probably very close to 0 degrees (straight up and down), or possibly up to a half-degree of negative camber (top of tire leaning inward). It is very unusual to see any car spec'ed for positive camber, BTW.

There are cars where changing the camber angle on one corner will change the toe angle enough to worry about. It really depends a lot on how the toe and camber are adjusted on your particular car, though. (E.g., on the wife's 911 there are eccentrics on the spring plate and changing one angle changes the other to some extent; on my 914 you change the rear camber by adding/removing shims on the outboard end of the trailing arm pivot, but when you remove the bolts that hold them in you lose the toe angle. But the front of both of those cars just has a tie-rod you adjust to set the toe, and a camber change has just about zero effect on the front toe angle.)

I have about -1.5 camber on the rear of my 914, and find that the tire wear is a little more on the edge but I consider it to be acceptable because of the improved cornering grip.

-soD
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Old 05-04-2011, 12:50 PM   #27 (permalink)
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Dad obviously thought it was a competition...



Eyeing up dad's Doblo's front camber it seems about the same - he too gets inside wear issues, though as with mine he may have toe out.

Just to let you know - new tyres are being fitted tomorrow to that beyond thread bare one... sharing my car for now


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diesel, focus, tire wear, vegetable oil

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