How critical is this tire wear?

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Originally Posted By: Papa Bear
Your wife will have to learn to stop parking "by feel" too ... were the tires/wheels/hubcaps scuffed ?? I bet the bad tire came from the passengers rear.


Heh, not exactly. The tires aren't scuffed and besides, this is the inside shoulder so scuffing it up while parking would be quite the trick :)
 
I'd be willing to run those tires on the front for a while, with the better ones in back. Definitely a rear alignment problem though. I've got plenty of rear camber on my 3 and my tires have never worn like that.
 
Choose the alignment service with some discretion. A well equipped shop should be able to give you before and after printed-out specs. The outfit you buy the tires from may or may not be worthy.
 
Originally Posted By: willix
Choose the alignment service with some discretion. A well equipped shop should be able to give you before and after printed-out specs. The outfit you buy the tires from may or may not be worthy.


Yeah, I know. There are only two place in town here that do them that I know of. One (a general shop) I trust, the other (a tire place) I'm not sure about. I had my other car at the first one for an alignment on the dealer after having a strut replaced and they found no problems. About 5k miles later I replaced my rear sway bar and took it to the tire shop for an alignment because the service manual recommended it. They needed to adjust every wheel, even though I hadn't touched the front ones.. Meh...

In any case both provide before and after printouts. I'm just not sure which ones know how to use the machine better.
 
Originally Posted By: rationull
Originally Posted By: willix
Choose the alignment service with some discretion. A well equipped shop should be able to give you before and after printed-out specs. The outfit you buy the tires from may or may not be worthy.


Yeah, I know. There are only two place in town here that do them that I know of. One (a general shop) I trust, the other (a tire place) I'm not sure about. I had my other car at the first one for an alignment on the dealer after having a strut replaced and they found no problems. About 5k miles later I replaced my rear sway bar and took it to the tire shop for an alignment because the service manual recommended it. They needed to adjust every wheel, even though I hadn't touched the front ones.. Meh...

In any case both provide before and after printouts. I'm just not sure which ones know how to use the machine better.


Some machines are also better than others. I always have my cars aligned with a newer Hunter machine.
 
Originally Posted By: Kiwi_ME
For that miles and wear there is clearly a rear suspension alignment problem. I would replace them and get the alignment done by the dealer.


+1, we still had tread at 77k on our toyos of the same tread design.
 
Those tires are fine. If you look at the good shoulder or any of your other tires you'll note they don't cut the sideways tread as deeply as the circumferential tread. This is so the shoulder tread blocks dont't squirm as much.

The tread design looks less sophisticated as the tire wears down. Lots and lots of tires are designed this way, you should take tread measurements in the main tread grooves. Yeah they'll be a little worse in the rain, compensate, but this is a trend that starts when they're new. I bet you have an easy 2-3k miles left on them.
 
3885ed6d.jpg


Still got some space on the worse circumferential tread cut above the wear bar, probably 3/32" there.

A depth gauge is only $2 at walmart and a good investment when seeking internet advice. Also helps spot wear when one side is 7/32 and the other 8/32 on a nearly new tire...
 
I wanted to follow up on this because the results of the alignment check were interesting and not what I expected:

- Front toe was off and camber near the edge of spec on one wheel.
- Steer ahead was out of spec (I don't even know what that means though -- haven't looked it up yet).
- NOTHING out of spec on the rear!

Both rear wheels have -2 degrees camber. This is not adjustable, and is within spec (range is -0.5 to -2.5 degrees). Rear toe was even at 0.04 inches on both wheels which is in spec. The shop increased the rear toe to 0.07 inches to try to prevent more wear. Max spec is 0.14 inches.

I'm wondering now if this was more the result of a couple of long rotation intervals combined with the rather extreme rear camber. IIRC I have heard of that happening with other Mazda3s, especially with the OEM Toyo tires. I'm going to keep on top of the rotations from here on out (with the exception, I guess, that I'll do the first rotation 2-3k miles from now with an oil change) and hope this doesn't happen to the new tires.
 
Originally Posted By: rationull
I wanted to follow up on this ........


Thanks. Most of the time, we never find out what happened. Not only is there a learning experience for us, but it's good for us to know that at least some of the time we've been helpful. Makes us want to help some more!

Originally Posted By: rationull
......

- Front toe was off and camber near the edge of spec on one wheel.....



So a combination of bad camber and bad toe did not produce a pull. This is an important lesson!

Originally Posted By: rationull
....

- Steer ahead was out of spec (I don't even know what that means though -- haven't looked it up yet)......


I assume this is "Thrust Angle" - and having the camber out of spec will cause this.

Originally Posted By: rationull
....

- NOTHING out of spec on the rear!

Both rear wheels have -2 degrees camber. This is not adjustable, and is within spec (range is -0.5 to -2.5 degrees). Rear toe was even at 0.04 inches on both wheels which is in spec. The shop increased the rear toe to 0.07 inches to try to prevent more wear. Max spec is 0.14 inches......


The rear camber might not be out of spec, but the SPEC is HUGE!!!! Way too high for good tire wear.

You have 2 choices: Live with the tire wear, or adjust the camber (yes, it can be adjusted!) and lose some handling.

Here's my recommendation for alignment specs:

http://www.barrystiretech.com/alignmentrecommendation.html

In this case you want the camber as listed. Be sure to compare to the front camber spec for a good comparison.

Originally Posted By: rationull
......I'm wondering now if this was more the result of a couple of long rotation intervals combined with the rather extreme rear camber. IIRC I have heard of that happening with other Mazda3s, especially with the OEM Toyo tires. I'm going to keep on top of the rotations from here on out (with the exception, I guess, that I'll do the first rotation 2-3k miles from now with an oil change) and hope this doesn't happen to the new tires.


Regular rotation will help, but the cure is going to be getting away from that severe camber. Again, there is a price to be paid.
 
Originally Posted By: CapriRacer
The rear camber might not be out of spec, but the SPEC is HUGE!!!! Way too high for good tire wear.

You have 2 choices: Live with the tire wear, or adjust the camber (yes, it can be adjusted!) and lose some handling.

Here's my recommendation for alignment specs:

http://www.barrystiretech.com/alignmentrecommendation.html

In this case you want the camber as listed. Be sure to compare to the front camber spec for a good comparison.


You can adjust the rear camber by installing a set of adjustable upper control arms on the rear suspension.

Moog makes a set, part #K10002. It allows -1.50 to +5.00 degrees of camber. Price is $99/each.

SPC also makes a set, their part # is 67420. Price and degree of adjustment are about the same.
 
CapriRacer: Thanks, I always look for your posts in this section. Thanks for the link on specs. I've got some thinking to do.

Hmm... $99 per side is a little tempting.
 
Hmm... I just dug up the results from the last alignment of my car (a 2007 Civic) and confirmed that its rear negative camber is just as extreme. Also not adjustable without a kit. I hadn't had any uneven wear problems on its tires so far (knock on wood) with about 25k miles on them -- and they're directional so they haven't been cross rotated!
 
Just so we are clear on something:

I am NOT claiming that camber over 1° ALWAYS results in wear issues. What I am claiming is that IF there is a one sided wear wear issue, then look at the camber. Keeping the camber low tends to decrease the number of problems.

Plus you can still get one sided wear in other ways - it's just that camber is usually the biggest contributor.

Same is true for other alignment parameters. Generally put, these are "tendencies" towards problems - not causes.
 
Of course, understood :) Just thought it was interesting. Given the alignments are similar on both cars the other variables are the driver and the tires. It's always possible that my tires will end up meeting the same fate and they're just lasting longer because they're better tires than the OEMs on this car.
 
Originally Posted By: rationull
Both rear wheels have -2 degrees camber. This is not adjustable, and is within spec (range is -0.5 to -2.5 degrees).
I've read the adjustment options between this post and the end, and wonder if the camber doesn't flatten out with load ... wish Capri had done a sketch or 2 showing positive and negative on his excellent site.

is /----\ or \----/ negative ... ??? I'd think most would go towards /----\ with increasing load.
 
/----\ is negative. I'm not positive what it does under load but I'd guess it would go more to the negative extreme.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: rationull
/----\ is negative. I'm not positive what it does under load but I'd guess it would go more to the negative extreme.


Generally as the suspension is compressed it will go more negative (causing even more issues if you lower a vehicle further without a kit). However, under ACTUAL cornering conditions the tire usually lines up better with the road as you have the leaning of the vehicle, force of the anti-roll bars, deformation of the bushings and deformation of the tires added to the equation. This is WHY negative camber is added, so that maximum, flat contact patch is available in hard cornering.

It's the rest of the time, rolling around doing nothing, that negative camber setups cause wear.
 
i had inside camber wear too. luckily my tires can be rotated inside outside. so now the side with camber wear is outside.
 
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