Tracking

[Tony Wright]

Just replaced my tyres and need to adjust the tracking. Being a mechanical numpty thought I would ask to make sure I'm doing it right 😳

 

Loosen retaining nut and one turn clockwise to tighten (all tyre wear on the inside) check tyre wear after about 500 miles 🤔 Does that seem okay 🤔 did say I was a numpty, tyres by the way are Yoko AO32R.

 

At the 24hr race at the ring this weekend there were a lot of diffrent tyre manufactures showing their products. Came across a tyre by Kumho (I think thats what they were called) in the same size as the AO32R I had just ordered from George Polley (215/50/13R). Has anyone heard of them, as the tyre looked specifically designed for motorsport a bit like the 32.

[Myles]

Tyre wear on the inside is more likely to be excessive camber - or taking the corners too slowly, ain't it?

 

 

 

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[Tony Wright]

Hi Myles, probably right about the corners but I do try hard just not hard enough 😳 Is it easy to adjust the camber 🤔 did say I was a numpty

[Unclefester]

Myles, I've often found inner rim tyre wear is caused by excessive toe-out....and I've been told that camber (neg) shouldn't make much difference....would you say this isn't right? On my race Davrian I once stripped the tread to the cords....somehow we had missed the fact it had about 3° toe out!

 

I also nearly killed myself in an Integrale I'd just bought from a "Rally Driver" who had put on lowered front springs, but had failed to realise that this involves re tracking....it had MASSIVE toe out!

 

The tread started to come off the tyre as I was overtaking a Merc on a motorway....fortunately I heard the telltale 'flap-flap-flap' and sussed what it was in time to ease off and slowly, without braking, drop back...and in to the verge.....oooopps! 😳 😳

 

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[Tony Wright]

So to save me going through another set of front tyres prematurley what do I need to do 🤔

[CharlesElliott]

It is either lots of toe out or lots of negative camber. If you look at the car from the front do

 

a) the tyres look like they are 'leaning in' a lot

b) the tyres look like they are pointing outwards a lot

 

a) is camber, b) is toe. It is relatively easy to adjust toe using the method you describe (although I would probably put on more than one turn). Camber requires splitting the ball joint but is a similar method after that.

 

Charles

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[sjmmarsh]

Tony

 

Just adding a bit of toe in or toe out, whilst it is good enough to get you to a garage, is unlikely to be solving the problem, unless you are lucky.

 

There are a number of ways of checking toe-in at home though, but they all involve a bit of effort.

 

My favourite is to jack the front end up and then run some masking tape around the centre of the treads of the front two tyres. By securing a pen to a solid object (I slide one into the hole of an axle stand instead of the normal pin) you can then scribe a line all the way round the wheel by spinning the wheel while the pen is (just) resting on it. You will find that your tyres are not round, but as long as you have a line on opposite sides of the wheel you will be OK. Having done both tyres, centre the steering and drop the car.

 

Now you need to make a bar to check the difference between the front and rear of the tyres. Find a rod or piece of wood the same width as the wheels. At each end of the rod securely tape a piece of card about 9" long and 4" wide (this is not too critical). You should have a device shaped something like this:

 

U_________________U

 

Rest the device at the back of the tyres and make a mark where the line on the masking tape crosses the card for each tyre. Now move the device to the front of the tyres and align one of the masking tape lines with the line you just made on the card. Look at the other tyre. If you have toe out, the centre-line mark on the tyre should be wider (i.e. outside) the mark on the card.

 

You now want to adjust the track rods so that you take up half the difference you can see (the back of the tyre moves out as you wind the track rod in, so doubling the effect of any adjustment).

 

Repeat the measurement to check the front and back are equal. You now have zero toe-in, which is a good place to start from. This should tell you whether you need to play around with the camber (which is much more time-consuming to adjust).

 

The 'normal' toe-in setting is 20', which equates to a 4mm difference between the front and rear measurement, so you can see that it is difficult to judge.

 

A quick and dirty method (if you have a wide-track front end) is to shine a laser along the edge of the front tyre and note where it hits the rear tyre. As the two wheels should be parallel, the beam should just hit the outer edge of the rear tyre on both sides.

 

Steve