Thread: Tire wear help!
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Old 05-03-2011, 06:55 PM   #26 (permalink)
some_other_dave
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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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