lol I 'll draw it out or try to explain it better when I'm not so tired. 12 hour day ugh. Plus I gotta wake up at like 8 tomorrow. Sucks to be me, nerds!

No, don't! I got it now. Lol Just had to read it again.

(02-05-2010 10:38 PM)B serious Wrote:  You need to get your car aligned. You can do it by eyeball spec...but it's probably not going to be right.

Camber is when the top of your tire is leaning inboard or outboard. It can be seen from the back or the front of the car.

Toe is best viewed from the top or bottom of the car. Its when the wheel is TURNED inboard or outboard. For example, when you're turning right, your RF wheel is toed out (negative toe) and your LF wheel is toed in (positive toe).

For obvious reasons, if you have static toe (wheels turned inboard or outboard) when the car is trying to go straight, you will have HORRENDOUS tire wear because you're dragging the tire.

Go get it aligned. They'll want to set it to factory ghey angles. I use a little negative camber for handling. 0 toe all around.

If you used like -2 degrees of camber front and back, and ran 0 toe, you'd probably never ever see irregular tire wear.

I'll have to have mine redone but this is close to what I run. -1.5 up front and -2 out back. Until I get a second set of bolts for the front I will not be able to reach -2 up front.

(02-05-2010 09:48 PM)SlooDC Wrote:  Let's not forget that many customers never personally talk to the tech, but to a service advisor. The tech can be completely honest, yet whatever the advisor says to the customer is what they hear, and that can be twisted.

right on the $$$money!
Pretty much all shop bosses are schemers and hustlers. The real deal, hustlers!
They may be nice to their family, friends etc. But when they see a new customer, or someone just stopping by from the road.......then oh yeah baby! better beware! You have just stepped into a schemers blueprint.
....and you thought that hustlers, schemers and tricks were only in the ghetto....pssstt..

Oh, ok, I understand now. That makes sense. The kit I got was for camber. I figured when the car was lowered, it increased the negative camber (what I thought was toe) and the tire was resting mainly on the inside edge causing the horrible abnormal tire wear. I figured they wheels were fixed straight. I didn't know you could twist them inward or outward to cause toe.

Lowering ur car or changing any geometry will cause the toe to be off also.

Lowering ur car caused neg. Camber. Since ur suspension is solid metal, it also causes the toe to be off.
Fix the toe. You could have probably left the negative Camber alone.

Here. This is what happens when you lower a 88-00 civic or 94-01 integra. Obviously, my angles are exxagerated to illustrate my point.

This is camber viewed from either the front or back...doesn't matter. Observe how the top of the tire tips inwards towards the center of the car. That's NEGATIVE camber:



This is toe viewed from the top of the car. Notice how the rear is toed IN (POSITIVE TOE) and the front is toed OUT (NEGATIVE TOE):



The reason you tires wore the way they did is because camber makes only a small edge of the tire available to the road. Toe makes that edge drag sideways as you're driving straight. So really...toe is what's eating up the tire. Camber is just supplying the situation. Get it?

Camber by itself is pretty harmless unless you're doing burnouts all the time or if you have an EXTREME amount of camber.

The advantage to negative camber is that it helps handling when you have the right amount. When you take a corner normally, without any negative camber, the weight shifts and you use only the outside of the tire. If you have negative camber, when you take a turn fast and the weight shifts, you're actually using the whole tire because the tire was tilted inwards at first. See what I mean? More contact patch, more grip.

The disadvantage to camber is that it does play a small role in wearing tires out unevenly as well...but it's not that bad. It also reduces straight line acceleration and braking traction since a smaller portion of your tire is touching the ground in a straight line.

Toe chews up tires even without camber. When you lower your car, you change camber AND toe.

There's a geometric reason for it. It's hard to explain in 2D lol. It's very easy to explain with a 3D model or even with something like a ruler and 2 pencils on a table. Again...slippery to explain over the net...so you'll have to trust me on it lol.

Remember, the example above is only for 88-00 civics and 90-01 integras. Other cars may react differently. S2000's react the opposite way, for example. The front toes in and the rear toes out under compression or negative camber.

Anyway...don't just eyeball your camber specs and think you're in the clear. You need a 4 wheel alignment for your particular vehicle that adresses camber AND toe.

Take the car somewhere and have it aligned. I would recommend around 1.5-2 degrees of NEGATIVE camber all around instead of just zero-ing it out ...unless you're ONLY going to be drag racing or something.

Have the guy set the toe to 0 all the way around.

That makes complete sense. Thanks for clearing it all up, B Serious.

So, would you say that with negative camber that you'd be able to tell a difference in your straight line acceleration than if you had everything set to 0?

(02-06-2010 07:06 PM)B serious Wrote:  The reason you tires wore the way they did is because camber makes only a small edge of the tire available to the road. Toe makes that edge drag sideways as you're driving straight. So really...toe is what's eating up the tire. Camber is just supplying the situation. Get it?

Can you have both? toe and neg camber together?

I'd say so. Apparently when you lower a car (88-00 Civic's 90-00 Integra's) and don't get it aligned you get negative camber and positive toe.

hmmmmmmm............ok. I think I understand.

(02-06-2010 09:58 PM)S-LudeDan Wrote:  

(02-06-2010 07:06 PM)B serious Wrote:  The reason you tires wore the way they did is because camber makes only a small edge of the tire available to the road. Toe makes that edge drag sideways as you're driving straight. So really...toe is what's eating up the tire. Camber is just supplying the situation. Get it?

Can you have both? toe and neg camber together?

Yes. Theyre individual variables. Another variable would be caster. But ...nevermind that.

(02-06-2010 09:59 PM)Koolass Wrote:  I'd say so. Apparently when you lower a car (88-00 Civic's 90-00 Integra's) and don't get it aligned you get negative camber and positive toe.

In the rear, yes. In the front its negative camber and negative toe.

(02-06-2010 10:24 PM)thayne Wrote:  hmmmmmmm............ok. I think I understand.

Just get it aligned lol.

Arrgh....I over napped!! I'm a nappy headed Ho!! I'm late for a party lol.

Just look at your toes man and imagine they are the rear wheels or the front wheels and youre looking at the wheels from the top. If the toes are pointed in, the front wheels are in toward the center line of the car. If they are out, then the opposite..the front are away from the center line of the car.

Camber and toe are the first semi advanced settings people get to on a car. Bolt-ons, cams and that kind of thing are easy. This requires thought so I consider it the first major step many take. The set-up B serious and I both go with is a great balance for a street driven car. It's balanced, improving handling in both directions equally and allowing a good portion of the tire to stay in contact while going straight. Ohh and the camber isn't enough to cause any noticeable wear on a tire. Average life of my stock tires is 30-35k miles when driven gently, mine made it to 29k with some let's say spirited driving (racing and twisty back road blasts).

So with the fact that it's a bit confusing to most it can easily lead a less knowledgeable tech or shop manager to having you reset it to those strange factory settings. Just add this stuff to the ole brain bank and stick to your guns when having work done. You can't put a price tag on information and lessons learned.

its taken me almost 4 years to figure out my S2k alignment. you can adjust camber, caster, and toe...and its a difficult car to align. some alignment techs don't take any suggestions. theres a trick I found out to doing the rear alignment to make it a ton easier. most techs wanna wrestle with it for hours. My way takes around 15-20 mins with better results lol.

the settings do get better every year, though. the car definately feels faster every new season.

the civic is super easy to align. I kinda just leave camber where it falls. I have a "ek" so the front camber won't be bad...it falls around 2-2.5 degrees negative. but the rear camber is like 3.x degrees negative lol.

"Efs" and "EGs" and DCs are the opposite. front camber goes way negative and rear camber isn't too bad comparitively.

I thought about a camber kit for my civic to tune the angles. I have to run around -2.5 out back at the least because of the wheel width and ride height. I still have that stupid inner fender lip.

Ok, so I had my wife take my car in this week while I was at school to have my mechanics look it over. They said that they did a shitty brake job and probably didn't turn the rotors. The told me that the rotors were really bad anyways and needed to be replaced. I payed $50 for new rotors including labor. Much better than the $450 for the hub assembly.

They also looked at the hub and hub bearing and said they didn't find anything wrong with it.

dumb asse's trying to rip you off, glad you took it somewhere else to get it checked out, (lawsuit imo) but its your call lol

I'd go back to the original shop and let them know that you know they were trying to rip you off. Lol

Nah. I was thinking of writing to the newspaper.lmao

haha thats cool to make sure everybody sees what kind of buisness they are