How much do you guys pay for alignment? Does anyone have the perfect specs so I can give to the shop? I can see my inner tire is dieing faster than the rest.

 

Stock size or something else? I can never tell with this board - there are guys running 245s in the rear of these cars, and that's the size I run on a 2910 lb Scion tC, not a 3600+ lb car.

 

how long did u lower it without getting it aligned?
i lowered my car on f sport springs and haven't aligned yet either .. its been 3 weeks and i'm getting it aligned on monday at the dealer
will i run in to the same problem?

 

I'm running 225 in the front and 255 in the rear


I lowered it in Feb and i just aligned it yesterday... so 5 months.... You should be fine if your doing it this soon, although this may happen to you in the near future as the springs set.

 

even if its f sport springs?

i thot it was suppose to be fully compatible with stock?

 

just fyi for me, the dealer should still do my alignment under warranty, right?? i just got my fsport springs today, gonna have a buddy of mine install them then get them re-aligned.

 

Why would the alignment be covered under warranty? You're asking them to perform a service. Warranty is only for defect issues; you modifying your car doesn't count.

FWIW, my dealer charged ~$80 for an alignment.

 

Actually alignment IS covered under the 'adjustments' coverage, but only for the first 12 months... and I'm unsure they'd do it if you've modded your suspension anyway.

 

How long should you wait for your springs to settle and to get an alignment? A week? A month?

 

It would depend on how far you plan on driving. I wouldn't go and drive 1000+ miles immediately after a drop without an alignment or your tires will be like the OP's. I drove about 100 miles and waited 2 weeks before my alignment.

 

Springs don't settle. The bushings deteriorate if the installer doesn't reset them when they change the suspension, and some people mistake this for settling.

The correct thing to do is reset the bushings (procedure described in the FSM) when the springs are installed. Then it can be aligned immediately.

 

Everything related to toe is out of specs. Their numbers for minimum and maximum are wrong, and where they set them for the rear will lead to inside edge wear for sure.

For the front tires - assuming they're 225/40/18 - each millimeter of toe is roughly 0.1798 degrees. Spec is 1mm +/- 2mm. So total front toe should be -0.1798 to +0.5395 degrees, not -0.15 to 0.40 degrees as listed on the sheet. The minus number is toe out. Somebody didn't use the right tire size when calculating those angles.

For the rear tires - assuming they're 255/40/18 - each millimeter of toe is roughly 0.1733 degrees. Minimum spec is 1mm, maximum is 5mm, both are toe in. So Lexus spec is 3mm +/- 2mm or 0.5199 degrees +/- 0.3466 degrees (0.1733 to 0.8665 degrees is the acceptable range). Your setting, IME, should be at minimum spec for longest tire life, so your total toe should be 0.1733 degrees.

At 0.9 degrees total toe in the rear (where they set yours), you're at 5.1935mm which is WAY too toed in and IME will kill the inside edges of your tires very quickly. This is the setting you'd use for a track car where turn in is the primary concern and tire wear is a secondary consideration, not a street car where tire life is the greatest concern.

 

^^ how did you figure out the degrees to mm?

 

Thanks for the info. I've driven about 100 miles in since wednesday when springs were installed. I have an appointment for an alignment on saturday. But I'm thinking it might be to early. We'll see.

Thanks for the help as well. I'll have to check and see if the bushings were reset.

 

Draw a trapezoid with the ends the same length as the diameter of the wheels and solve the triangle on each end. You know two sides, toe value and wheel diameter. Divide toe by wheel diameter and take the arc sine of that number to get degrees. You can calculate this for each wheel or total toe, but the numbers I provided are accurate for the front and rear wheels on the IS350 with 18" wheels and OEM size tires. If the tire size changes, the angles change. Lexus does NOT specify angles, they specific millimeters, so most alignment shops using angles provided by their machines are going to get this wrong unless they calculate the correct angles based on the factory spec and the tires mounted on the car. Now I know why I never had a problem with the alignments I got in Sacramento - the tech used a scribe to make a tiny slice around the tire for measurement, then used a bar with sliders on it to measure front and rear by distance, not by angle. The machines aren't smart enough to compensate for this and they're using a database with fixed angles, not actual measured toe settings.

See diagram for how I calculated it: