Greg5OH

Ok guys, so me PO and myself have this problem with my 2000 ls400.
Im runnin g-3 deg camber front -4 rear. front toe .15 deg total in the front, forget rear.

Front inside tires keep getting chewed, heel and toe wear pattern.
for example. mine is more toe worn, as its he very edge thats worn, but very pronounced heel-toe wear. ill get a pic tomorrow during the day. Going to rechec my front alignent at the shop who set it before this trip too..

seems that it only happens when ding long distance freeway driving, PO said hed do thousadns of kms in town with no noicable wear but would go thru a set on long 1000 mile trips.

now before u say camber!-the rears are MINT, and its at -4 deg. i mean no noticable wear at all. fronts...rocky mountains on the inside tread blocks.

Struts, and all bushings are newer and tight, balljoints new, i do not feel any lay in wheel bearings or tie rods.

Scratching my head on this one. ANy ideas? Could the inner tie rods simply be worn out but i am not excerting enough force on them by hand to noice the slop? ging to do the dry steer check tomrrow, silly i forgot about it previously. However the steering feels tight and connected when doing quick switch backs white driving.....

LScowboyLS

when you deviate from factory specified alignment, all bets are off on nice even tire wear

it's just common sense!

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

this with a homebase alignment or with an actual string-based or laser alignment machine? seems like toe is off, either at that axle or in thrust.

RA40

iTrader: (6)

When you get the alignment post the before-after numbers. I'm not nearly as low as many here and summer rubber lasts 40K miles+. You need to get a tech that can dial in good specs. When the car is that low, there will be some compromises to deal with. Make sure all those suspension bushings are happy too.

That doesn't make sense. A bad alignment is going to cause wear regardless in one shot or cumulative.

sshhlexus

I use the Lincoln penny test for tread depth. '93/LS400, they seem to wear evenly, only rotated them once in 2 yrs. A bit more wear on the inside. I think any RWD vehicle tires would wear differently than say FWD. The last time, before the LS I owned a RWD car was 1980.

timmy0tool

iTrader: (7)

how is your caster? did you get this situated as in your other thread?
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls4...nt-caster.html

even if the rears have more camber, the rear does not do 80% of the braking and steering hence more wear up front naturally. the feathering you see in the inner tire wear is due to toe.

how are you aligning the car? alignment rack? i ask bc most alignment shops will raise the car then put it back down on the slip pads. doing this on a lowered car is bad b/c the car will actually settle of a different ride height from your actual height, then your seemingly corrected toe will go off again once you drive off the rack.

my suggestion is to align the car immediately as you drive up on the rack, and see if you get different results.

Amskeptic

That is not camber-related wear, which would show a smooth loss of tread depth on one side or the other of the footprint, nor does it look like incorrect toe, which would give you a smooth rasp in one direction and a rough return.
That looks like cupping from imbalance.
There are two frequencies to imbalance, one that shows up at the steering wheel at the same frequency as the wheel rotational speed, and the other a higher frequency imbalance that is much harder to feel. In the former case, a wheel balance is called for, duh. But the latter case is trickier, it relies on your shock absorbers to dampen out. Shocks also have two frequencies, one is the slow speed bounding over railroad tracks type of motion, and you can see this form of wear from far away. The other frequency is much higher almost vibrational damping. If your tires pass a wheel balance test, but have this cupping and tread destruction, worn shock absorbers are your next culprit.

You should also be aware that alignments *cannot* be performed at lowered ride height. The vehicle must be lifted to factory height, adjusted there, and allowed to settle from there. Note how you can stuff five big people in a Lexus, notice the rear wheels with their obvious negative camber, and drive across the country with perfect tire wear. The suspension "knows" how to dial in more toe-out as the negative camber increases.
Colin

Largefarva

Looks like toe wear to me, tough to tell from the pic though, could also be cupping caused by worn shocks. If that's the RF tire I'd say it has a ton of negative toe. Also, not sure who said a car "can't be adjusted at lowered ride height", I do it all the time and never have strange wear come back, have done my own cars as well, even wear all the way across. If you need to raise the car, you'll be changing ALL the angles, so an alignment would be totally pointless.

chrcrou26

Now you said there's no play in the suspension....but these are loaded suspensions....Once you lift the car anything but a bad bearing is hard to diagnose without pulling out the pry bar....There are many components that could be causing this wear....One tru fact is anything other then oem spec wheels will throw off tire wear just comes with the territory

Greg5OH

done on an alignment rack, total toe in is .15 deg, we got the caster dialed in after my 2000 mile trip. i dont remember the exact numbers now, but we got it as close as possible to eachother, with the left being .8 degrees more positive than the right. the rigth is at 6.4 i believe so left is 7.2 by that.


im getting under it today goign to take the boots off and check inner tie rod condition.
the shocks seem fine, no pitching rolling or bouncing, very firm and controlled on bumps on the highway. D2 racing bags and struts.

the toe was the same from 2 weeks ago when it was on the rack is it was yesterday. i riase the car to get on the rack, then lower it down, then roll it as far back and forward a few times to settle the suspesnion as much as possible.
always align at the same ride heigth that i highway drive at.

LScowboyLS

when a car cannot be brought into proper alignment, or will not stay aligned, such that the uneven tire wear continues after the alignment, it is a sign that there is a steering or suspension component that is shot, such as a ball joint or tie rod, for example

Shmee

iTrader: (3)

If you are doing a shake test to determin the condition of any joints, you might be missing something. Do a quick search for my "coilover how-to" and in it is the correct and most accurate method for determining once and for all if you might have a joint that is giving you this wear.

Looking at the tires, I'd almost say that sort of wear is indicative of worn ball joints.
Get a big set of channel locks on all those joints and report back!

chrcrou26

If the car is on bags there's bound to be camber caster issues....which would make proper alignment impossible. ..One ssolution is to Shorten and angle the knuckle to compensate for a much lower ride....but if you just leave as is you'll chew up suspension components and tires...With these cars ride height affects premature wheel just as much as slapping on 20's with no suspension mods to compensate

1sWt2GS

iTrader: (6)

Your toe should be as close to .0 as possible. that might be one of the possible problems.

LScowboyLS

think about this, NASCAR race cars also use an alignment that is way out of spec, because the car is customized, and they have $100 million dollar race shops to figure out the ideal caster, camber and toe, and yet, their dang tires are often worn off on one side or cupping or have other issues within 50-100 miles of being installed!