trophy

As said by a number of guys, Rear Toe is the biggest culprit for rear tire wear on our cars. Camber has very little effect in isolation, if you have alot of camber and toe you will get inside shoulder wear like crazy....

I run -3.2 camber on front and -2.8 to -3 on the rear and get even tire wear because my toe and Kinematic toe is set perfectly (and I balance street miles with track miles )...

911Dave

I see some HTRZ III's in my future.

I had the car aligned shortly after I took delivery of it a year and 1700 miles ago, so the PO drove them for the first 2800 miles. Unfortunately I don't have the before/after alignment specs so I'm not sure if toe was a problem. I did tell the tech I wanted it aligned to OEM specs, so I'm assuming most of the excessive wear occurred prior to that.

The wear does appear to be even across the face of the tires, so at least that's good. I predict I have a further 1,000 miles of city driving in them before they become dangerous.

Mike J

If the car is really low, its hard to get the toe correct in the rear - there is not enough range in the eccentrics to move the control arms that far. This is why a solutions like Tarett control arms can offer more range of movement.

But everyone is right - the main problem is the rear toe - that has destroyed a lot of tires.

Cheers,

Mike

x50type

Race911

How to tell from tyre wear if it is due to camber or toe [in or out]?

Incidentally, the photo of the badly worn tyre is one of the front ones - the rears wear normally.


The fronts were re-aligned following the bad wear and are fine.

Magdaddy

don't expect the AWD to save you when the rears are worn. If your C4S has any amount of miles on it, your diff is used up. Worn rears can make the car feel very strange in the dry, in the wet they can be down right dangerous and unpredictable.

These cars are such an absolute joy when right, why miss the sweet spot? Get new rears, maybe a ful set fo tires..then a fresh check of the alignment. A full set on Hankooks are only around $7-800 delivered-the last time I looked anyway.

Cheap piece of mind.

Good Luck

race911

Well, you should have a before and after toe spec. And on the fronts it's total toe, since to go down the road straight you'll compensate for side-to-side variance by moving the steering wheel.

(Thrust angle is what we call deviation in the rear. And that's what will make a car crab.)

x50type

Thanks for the info.

Front toe before - left 0.00 degrees, right 0.05 degrees.
Front toe after - left 0.05 degrees, right 0.05 degrees.

Front camber before - left 1.1degrees negative, right 1.2 degrees negative.
Front camber after - left 0.9 degrees negative, right 0.9 degrees negative.

From the above, does the before front toe or before camber indicate heavy inside tyre wear as per my photo?

trophy

Nothing in your before specs indicates the potential for extended wear. For me I always run 0 toe on the front, small amount on the rear.

BlackCar

I have to laugh every time I read a post about rear tire wear. Owned my 96 C4 since 1999. Rear tires dont last if you're driving aggressively, even with a proper alignment. I used to get between 4 and 5K miles on the rears. Now, I'm getting older and driving easier, so they last 10K or so. But to expect extended life on the rear tires is unrealistic. It's the price of fun.