https://photos.app.goo.gl/79RTNkdQeV6FWcsn6

Is a pic of the tyres off the front of my car after 10k miles or so. The left is clearly worn on the inside, so I need to get them set up properly yes?

(I so want to DIY this 🙂 )

Well I set mine up with a trackace.

But 4 jack stands string and a tape measure will do the same thing…itll just consume much more of your time

Theoretically possible, but unless you are absolutely flat broke pay the £40 to get someone to do it.

You know there are specific angles to set, don’t you? Not just straight ahead.

Oh yes I should have said…. 4 jackstands , string ,tape and a basic grasp of maths

But 4 jack stands string and a tape measure will do the same thing…itll just consume much more of your time

No need to over complicate it. And that gets really complicated when you have to deal with cars with uneven track widths front and rear.

Assuming its a bog standard car it quite probably only has toe in adjustable via the tie rod ends.

So get a plank of wood (8×1″ or thereabouts and two tape measures.

Cut two 2ft pieces, if you want to get fancy put a clip at each end and attach some bungee between them to keep them upright and stable while you work.

Find the flatest car park you can.

Inflate the tyres a bit harder than normal to minimise the bulge at the bottom and put the planks against the outside of the tyres.

Measure at the top of the plank front and back. If the toe in isn’t zero then just do some simple trig to convert the angle to a measurement, or for back of a fag packet rather than fag paper accuracy 1 degree is 1cm over the 24″ of the planks.

Remember to bounce the suspension to settle it and roll it back and forth between adjustments/measurements.

Although before you do all that, is the suspension 100% perfect? Something has to cause it to be out of alignment, most likely a radius arm bushing?

Not much help with alignment, apart from a proper 4 wheel alignment can transform a car.

But assuming you live in Portobello you might want to hide your location from the Google photos link.

If only one is worn on the inside, I’d suggest looking at the state of the ball joints, TRE and bushes as well. If it’s both then more likely to be excessive toe out.

Get the suspension etc checked and them go to a specialist alignment company (not the people who fitted your tyres).

If you are in Bristol I can recommend Lee at FCM Wheel Alignment:

http://www.fcmwheelalignment.co.uk/

I always spout off on here about how good 4 wheel alignment is.

However, I changed the the track rod ends on my car last year, and although I counted the number of turns when taking the nuts off the old ones, the new ones were longer so I knew straight away it was miles out.

My wife needed the car so tracked it using a tape measure, it seems pretty much bang on and 12 months later tyre wear is even. It’s a bit long winded though as after each adjustment you need to lower the car and move it back and forth slightly to settle everything before checking it. I like the idea above of using planks, the car is quite low so I can’t take measurements at 3 and 9 o clock positions.

Cheers all, I’ve no idea what’s adjustable or not, I’ll have a look on the forum.

If only one tyre is wearing unevenly then something is wrong with the car – tracking out would mean both front tyres wearing unevenly. It could be camber if you have adjustable camber but that is rare. More likely a bent suspension component like a wishbone or a failed joint allowing camber to be wrong

Gotta say, whilst I admire the ‘have a go’ attitude it does seem an awful lot of faff for something that that could go expensively wrong when you could have it professionally done and warrantied for beer money. Your local Kwik-Fit / [insert preferred wheel place here] will have alignment rigs costing thousands if not tens of thousands of pounds, why would they bother if they could do as good a job with a plank and a bit of string?

If only one tyre is wearing unevenly then something is wrong with the car

Can also be caused by driving like a ****. If you’re frequently wheel spinning and the left-hand tyre is on a dirtier, less grippy part of the road, that tyre will wear more. Or, if you do kamikaze right turns across traffic with the left-hand tyre taking most of the load, but drive like a granny when you turn left.

Kwikfit normally mess it up even with the proper kit!!! Why would you want your steering wheel straight anyways mate, it’s round innit?

why would they bother if they could do as good a job with a plank and a bit of string?

Speed as I said in my first post the string and Jack stands will take more of your time than other methods. You realise it’s all geometry right ? The machines take away the calibration /set up time but other than that your making the same adjustments.

Camber wearing inner edges is a very uncommon event. You have to have a lot of camber for it to cause wear (it would likely be visible different) It’s almost always toe, caster or a joint/bush.
If you think about what toe does, it rotates the tyre so the worn edge is being dragged out of line against the rotation of the tyre.

Speed as I said in my first post

And accuracy.

Kwikfit normally mess it up even with the proper kit!!!

IME this is another one of those “you can’t believe anything on Wikipedia” pseudo-facts. Kwik Fit have a poor rep but I think there’s a degree of snobbery involved also. I’ve been using them for a couple of decades at least and not once had a problem with their work. I expect like many things there’s good and bad branches, with good and bad mechanics therein.

Certainly I’d trust them ahead of some bloke on the Internet who’s got a ball of twine and a length of two by four and is asking a bunch of alleged cyclists what to do before googling how to make the adjustments.

Eh, whatever. If it were a huge expensive job I’d be right there with you, but it just seems a lot of hassle for minimal reward and potentially high risk. At best, if you get it wrong you’ll destroy two new tires ahead of their natural lifespan and it’ll cost you more than you’ve saved. At worst does this not present a safety issue?

Speed as I said in my first post

And accuracy

Go on then. Explain to me how it all works and how you know that to be a fact other than kwikfit adverts.

Al has form on critical thinking rather than doing what the it manuals tell him. I think he will be ok (admittedly there are plenty on here I would point in a garages direction based on previous postings of their DIY and critical thinking abilities

At worst does this not present a safety issue?

Just shows how little you know on the subject.

Further more out side of track racing most cars a
Have quite a. Wide tolerance on the toe setting -and most cars that I believe al could have only have toe adjustment from the factory….. -mini/smart/mx5 unless I missed him buying a track day toy.

All the alignment rigs do is take the faff out of it.

Wheels sit on turntables, whole car on a lift, but the laser/mirrors part is just doing the same job as the string.

Its really not a difficult job if you have somewhere flat to do it.

That said, last time i paid halfords to do it it cost less than repairing a puncture (£16)!

Cheers again all.

TJ that was my thought re toe in.
Hols it’s rwd.

TR there was a Breadvan Polo, Amazon and P1800 also.

Unfortunately I’ve had only 1 response on the car’s forum. The Smart has seen the most spannering from me, and I find some of it very satisfying, stuff like this especially. However it may be one for a garage. I’ll do more research.

If you think about what toe does, it rotates the tyre so the worn edge is being dragged out of line against the rotation of the tyre.

Toe will cause both tyres to wear with the same pattern. If it’s only one tyre, it’s probably going to be an issue with camber (which could be caused by worn or bent parts).

Kwik Fit have a poor rep but I think there’s a degree of snobbery involved also. I’ve been using them for a couple of decades at least and not once had a problem with their work

I’ve had a problem every single time I’ve been there…from trying to charge me the best part of a grand to replace wishbones and denying that I can just change the bushings, (and starting work when I asked them not to, they weren’t very happy when I turned up and said it would be stuck on their lift until they reassembled the suspension) from immobilising my (1997) car for an hour as someone removed the post-it note with the immobiliser keycode and the next guy just punched in random numbers until the car wouldn’t accept another attempt, (and pushing the car out into the carpark so they could lock up and go home (I insisted on sitting in their reception instead of outside on a dark winters evening so the guy had to stay on until my car would start) to not being able to order in a trailer tyre as it didn’t have a ratio (which just means the height is the same as the width) to promising me an air con recharge was successful and taking payment and then having to return and queue for 20 minutes to get my refund as it didn’t work. Oh and the original problem of tracking a car without securing the steering wheel straight ahead…twice.

Camber is even easier to check

Flat carpark and a relevently sized level or a straight edge and a short level.

It will tell you if there is a difference across the two sides.

Use the rim face not the tire – as the tire naturally bulges at the bottom which will throw your angle out.

and its worth checking as it doesnt necessarily follow that 1 worn inside edge is camber/damaged parts it can still be toe settings.

Al, I’ve used these guys in the past. They know their stuff.
http://www.clcm-autotyre.co.uk/

and its worth checking as it doesnt necessarily follow that 1 worn inside edge is camber/damaged parts it can still be toe settings.

You can’t have one wheel with different toe to the other, they are relative to each other. If the chassis is straight and everything else is set up properly, both wheels will have identical toe when you are driving straight on a level road. Of course, if the road is heavily cambered, you may need to steer slightly towards the center of the road to avoid drifting off. In that case, you would expect the tyres to wear slightly differently, but that’s nothing to do with the toe settings. Similarly, if you’ve whacked a kerb really hard and bent things, you might get uneven wear, but that’s nothing to do with the toe settings.

As said, you need an absolute ton of negative camber(like over 5*, which you’d really notice) to notice it having a rapid effect on tyre wear.
Yes, it will wear it, but the wear people notice is usually the fault of toe. People lower cars, see the camber increase, and a few months later notice the wear on their tyres. They look at the wheel and the most obvious thing is usually the camber, so that gets blamed. However, most geo is designed to change the toe as the wheel moves through it’s travel to increase stability, and putting the wheel in a different place in the travel at rest results in a toe change.

I should have been clearer though – wear on the inside of both tyres more often than not is due to toe.
Wear on the inside of one is normally due to a worn bush/ballpoint/TRE which manifests as play at the wheel, and ‘drags’ one edge of the tyre.
(I’m ignoring the effect rear toe and thrust angle has, obvs)

But op: tbh id just take it somewhere with a Hunter machine or similar and get them to do it. Mucking about with Geo at home is a doable, as above, but a bit of a PITA.
Unless you have a lift, that is.

I’ve driven cars a fair distance with a fair lump of negative and toe corrected and noticed absolutely zero increased tyre wear on the inner edge.

Go on then. Explain to me how it all works and how you know that to be a fact other than kwikfit adverts.

I’ve no idea. It seemed logical to me that lasers would be more accurate than string.

Just shows how little you know on the subject.

What, me asking questions? Correct.