SuperSpec

SuperSpec

Wednesday 8 September 2021

Tracking Check

 Spent this morning playing with my latest toy 😁   She has always suffered a bit from the front unevenly wearing unevenly on the outside.  I replaced the tyres 4 years ago at around the 12,000 mile mark, and it looks like I need to replace them again at 24,000 miles, particularly as one of them was an advisory on the last MOT.   I always assumed it was a tracking alignment error and a few weeks ago I had them checked by my local garage who confirmed it was out and realigned them.

I'm wasn't convinced he did it correctly as she still had a tendency to pull to the left so I treated myself to a check gadget.

Great fun, quite fiddly to set up but eventually managed it.  Practice makes perfect.    Here was the result:

So a slight toe-out but nothing to worry about.   Also it was only a practice run, it shouldn't be on carpet and car needs positioning better so I need to do it properly. 

However, it did make me think a bit about the tyre wear and I am not now convinced I was correct about the tracking, particularly as the wear only really started when I bought her.    So googling it and one of the main reasons is worn out springs causing the camber to change and angling the wheel vertically so the outer edge takes more of the load.   I now realise that compressing the springs to raise the ride height has the same effect of changing the camber by moving out the top of the tyre.   So maybe that is reason?

I still need to buy some tyres and my local tyre depot does free alignment checks (or £35 to adjust it) so I think I will do that.   However, I know that adjusting the camber is not a trivial job, as you have to break the top ball joint and rotate the joint, so I guess they would charge a lot more for that.    Have to ask them.   On the other hand, buying two new tyres every 5 yrs/12,000 miles is not a big deal.

I could also cure it by dropping the ride height, but faced with a trade between replacing the cars or trashing the sump I think the tyres win 😁



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