Help! Car is eating up tires like candy.

[DRrBob]

I did my CA's, TRE's, sway bar links and installed Vogtland coilovers back in july and the car is pulling to the right. It's also eating up the driver side tires, more so in the rear. The alignment was done on a Hunter machine with the 1BE setting. The camber isnt even on both sides of the car. Up front there is -2.1 drivers and -1.6 on the passenger. In the rear its -2.0 driver and -1.3 passenger. Now i dont really know too much suspension but shouldnt these be close to the same? Is there any way I can adjust this myself or do i need to have the subframe adjusted? Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks guys!

[andyrew]

Camber is based on ride height in the front. left to right camber is based on adjustment. You (read your alignment guy) should be able to adjust the front camber even on the front.

The rear is also ride height dependent and adjustment dependent. You should only have your alignment guy change that. (lowest and outmost bolt on the rear is the camber adjustment)

What are your toe settings? Thats what kills your tires.

Is your ride height even?
How are the tires wearing? insides wear fast; feathering of the tread; ect..

[VMRWheels]

Check your toe settings. Toe kills tires a lot faster then camber.

-Charles@VMRWheels
www.vmrwheels.com

[Toyotatech]

The pulling is caused by the front camber most likely, half a degree can cause a pull. Rear toe can also cause a pull. The wear if on the inside edge would be caused by camber and is intensified when the toe is off also. A Lot of technicians leave the rear alone unless it's real bad especially on eccentric rear setups so the rear toe probably needs adjusted along with the camber on the front and rear.

[DRrBob]

I left my print out in my buddies car but I will post the toe settings up tomorrow.I believe my ride height is even but what is the proper way I should check my ride height?
The insides of the drivers side tires, both front and rear, are wearing pretty quickly. The outsides dont seem to be wearing that much. The passenger side seems to be wearing normal.

[onemoremile]

Camber does very little to contribute to tire wear. Toe causes the tires to fight each other and scrubs the rubber off.

Picture downhill skiing. With the skis parallel you can run on the inside or outside edges and nothing really changes. Point the tips towards or away from each other and you slow down.

[Toyotatech]

I have seen cars with the toe perfect and the inside scrubbed off due too too much negative camber.

[Pete@IE]

yep there is no doubt it will scrub off the insides, but a car with the toe out of whack will do it a heck of a lot faster.

Nothing like putting in a new steering rack and then watching as your car leaves tractor tread marks everywhere.

[onemoremile]

I ran -1.6 camber on a 94 Jetta on the original Azenis for over 15k miles. That included about a hundred autocrosses and countless laps around the tracks. Tire wear was remarkably even.

[tmljeh19]

Here's what to do. Take your hand and run it across the face of the tire left to right and back slowly. If you run ur hand in towards the engine and its smooth and back away from the engine is rougher then you have toe out problem and vise versa. Rough towards and engine and smooth away you have a toe in problem. your car will always pull to the more positive camber. so your car pulling to the right is right on because its the least neg camber. you dont just want your camber even on both sides you want it close to 0. does you car wander and weave at all? did you have your call aligned after all those parts were installed? but check for feathered edges (the hand thing) if there is no indication of one way smooth and the other rough then you do not have a toe problem its just the camber.