[s-cars] Chewed up tires...

[Mike Fitton]

Went through this earlier this year.  Car was/is lowered with Eibachs.  
Thought the toe was straight and the alignment good.  Chewed out the 
inner edge of both front tires, left side way more than right side.  
Took it in for a rack alignment and the tech showed me the problem.  The 
left damper was loose (id est, toast, spent, done, finished, broke, past 
tense).  Hard to describe in email.  Let's just say the piston could 
move relative to the body in more than one dimension.  So the toe on 
that side was wandering and throwing off my home alignments.  Some 
things just don't become obvious until the car is in the air.  I was 
beating my head over the failure point in my home alignment setup.

Agree with Wylie.  Loose nuts on the upper mount will affect both toe 
and camber (we're talking about a triangle here).  Definitely check 
those.  Also agree with Tom.  Before I took it in the car was way 
twitchy on the highway.  If you're toe is out you might have noticed 
this too, though perhaps less so at stock height.

I'm still with the Eibachs and the camber is nowhere close to stock.  
Since having the toe straightened out and those tires replaced I can't 
see any unusual wear on the tires, so I'm of the opinion that camber 
alone doesn't kill tires very quickly on these cars.  Also, for what 
it's worth, I've come to not expect even 20k out of any Kumhos I've ever 
owned...

-Cheers!
Mike

Abe Berman wrote:
> Patient is a 95.5 Avant, just north of 100k I think.  Approximately 20k on
> the Kumho tires and alignment done when they were installed.  Bilstein
> struts up front, stock struts in the rear.  Stock springs.  Suspension is in
> good shape otherwise (ball joints, strut mounts, etc)
>
> The insides of the front tires were so worn that the sidewall and tread
> separated and blew out on the driver side.  Passenger side not much better
> shape-wise.  Camber must be pretty off.  I know that the C4's are legendary
> for this, but I thought it was more prevalent when the car was lowered.
> Will the Igor mod or the 2Bennett/ECS camber plates help here or am I doomed
> to replace tires every 20k...
>
> Abe
> Burlington, VT
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