Rolland

I'm first to admit I don't know Jack about working on cars, so yesterday I was getting some new tires on my Protege (all 4 were going pretty bald) and the guy kept pimping me to have them aligned.

The tires were already $300 and he wanted another $70 to have them aligned.

I told him not to do the alignment, got the tires put on and went on my way.

I've seen uneven tire wear on other vehicles, so I know that un-alignment (if that is a word) exists, but my question is: What is done by the mechanic when wheels are aligned? Also, I rotate my own wheels, so am I screwing up the alignment every time I do the rotation?

Thanks,

Rolland

rjacobs

Allignment is pretty hard to mess up once its set unless you hit a pot hole or jar the wheel pretty hard on something. Rotating your own tires will not screw up your allignment. The only real reason to do an allignment is if your tires are wearing unevenly such as one side is wearing more than the other side. When they allign your wheels they put them on a machine that measures all the specs and then they look at the factory specs and align to them. The place I always go to will generaly charge me 20 bucks to check the allignment and if I need the alignment they will charge me 30 bucks more. Usually with new tires though they include an alignment.

Lawerence

I dunno i've had some different experiences with alignment.
In my old sentra the alignment would be off if i hit the smallest of potholes or RR tracks. Very annoying.

The RX7 is alot better, tho i did need an alignment after I got my balljoint replaced.


Basically if your car is not aligned properly it will either pull left/right, or when you have the wheel on center the car will not be going striaght.

Its always good to get an alignment/balance after new wheels/tires.

Gord96BRG

It's more commonly called a wheel alignment, not tire alignment, but to be technically correct it's a hub alignment. It doesn't matter what wheels or tires are bolted to the hubs, the adjustments are to the camber, caster, and toe-in of the hub. Alignment does not change from changing wheels or tires.

Not true. That's one good reason for getting an alignment, but on a sports car, tuning the handling is a far more desirable reason. Factory specs are useless - have you seen them for the RX-8? For example, the front camber spec is 0.26° to -0.45°... +/- 1.0°!!! That means you could have one front wheel with 1.26° positive camber, the other front wheel with -1.45° negative camber, and still be within factory specs. In other words, going to a shop and saying "give me an alignment to factory specs" will give you a garbage alignment.

What you need to do is decide what specs you want, go to a shop that does performance alignments, tell them to hit the specs YOU want, matched side to side, AND you need to ballast the car to how you typically drive. If you're usually solo, then either you sit in the driver's seat or you insist that the shop add equivalent weight to the driver's seat. The ballast is very important - I've won several bets by getting a shop to set up the car on an alignment rack, measure the settings, then getting in the car and watching how much the settings change. Aligning an empty car is a waste of time - you have to get it aligned when it's loaded how you usually drive.

Another note - since factory alignment specs are useless, the logical follow-on is that factory alignments are useless. Yes, the alignment your car has as it leaves the factory will be a garbage alignment. I had my RX-8 aligned last month for the first time, and the right side settings (both front and rear) had 0.5° more camber than the left side settings, and they had too little front camber and too much rear camber (and too much rear toe) - from the factory. Before the alignment, my car understeered too much - after the alignment, the handling is much more neutral, and my rear tires won't wear as fast either. I've never hit a curb or done anything that would knock the alignment out - it was crappy straight out of the factory (but within specs!).

Regards,
Gordon

bmc

Hell, mine came with 1.3 degrees of POSSITIVE camber. The -.85 that I got out of it made MASSIVE difference in handling, just on the street.

BTW, in case anyone cares, here are my settings:

F
-.85 camber
0 toe
6.8 caster

R
-1.5 camber
+0.02" toe

Gord96BRG

Here's my new settings (with me in drivers seat):

Front
Camber -0.98°
Caster 6.37°
Toe in 0.01°

Rear
Camber -1.22°
Toe in 0.03°

Regards,
Gordon

beachdog

Gord, that's great advice. I have suspected that my factory alignement was NG but the dealer confirmed it was within spec. Since I didn't know the spec I had no idea that the range was so wide.

How did you come up with your specs and would you consider them to be keepers?

Rolland

Woah, did I mention this was my Protege?

Thanks a ton to the people that have replied. For now I will keep an eye on tire wear and steering pull.

When I can scratch the cash together for my 8, then I will investigate tuning the handling and factory vs. actual use settings.

~ Rolland

RotorManiac

guys sorry to revive an one-year-old thread, but I thought it might be better than to start a new one
I'm waiting for my new coilovers within next week, so I think it is time to do an alignment too. On the highway, the car doesn't go straight anymore... I think Gordon's settings are quite good, but what do the rest of you guys have on your cars??

I will lower the car 2-3cm. I want to have less understeer and more sharp steering wheel responce, so I think negative toe in is better... what do you think? Am I right or totally wrong?

Thanks

NoCones

I have about -1.0 camber and zero toe at all corners.

Yes, you could toe the front out to get better turn in and toe the rear out to get the car to understeer less, but IMO this car doesn't need help with turn-in...and as far as oversteer/understeer, who knows how the car will behave with the coilovers? The further from zero you go with toe, the worse your tire wear will be...toe is much harder on tires than camber.

FONZIE

I swapped over my winter Dunlop M3s to the summer Dunlop 8090s last weekend and I thought I was going crazy. The car was very twitchy. I kept telling myself that I just wasn't used to the summer tires yet. I've decided to get them aligned on Wednesday because it just doesn't feel right even after a week.

The weird thing is that with the 17" winter tires on the car felt fine

Does this sound strange to anyone?

NoCones

The summer tires probably tramline a lot more/worse than the winter tires.

schrottie

Could be too much toe-in in the rear. Quite possible to be unnoticable with 17'' winter-tires and very bad with 18'' summer-tires. My factory setup was like this, too.

FONZIE

That's what the alignment guy thought as well. There might also be an issue with slight overinflation of the tires due to the crappy tire guage on the inflator at the local gas station.... I'm picking up the car this afternoon so I'll fill in the results later.

FONZIE

Well, I got my 4 wheel alignment and balancing and the car handles MUCH better now. Unfortunately, they told me that more than one of my rotors are warped and that should be a warranty issue since I have less than 20K miles on my car. So I'm taking the car in next friday to see what the dealer says....

Go48

Don't be too surprised if the dealer considers that wear and tear, and not a defect requiring replacement. Brake rotors that "warp" (actually get out of true and basically wobble) are not that uncommon. This can be caused by a bunch of things, most of which are unrelated to a defect in the manufacturing or installation process. If you have a "good" dealer, he may turn them for you free of charge, and if you complain about squealing brakes he might even replace the pads, but don't expect a replacement of the rotors.

But, then again, you can't predict how some dealers will handle such claims. You may be pleasantly surprised. Hope so for your sake.