Friday, August 04, 2006 - 08:37 am, by: Matthew Sharpe(Madmatt)
Paul Irwin wrote on Thursday, August 03, 2006 - 04:00 pm:
What's a Champiro?
You might know them as GT-Radials as they often miss out the Champiro brand name when they are advertising. Good quality budget "performance" tyre - IMO better than Firestone or similar.
Sunday, August 06, 2006 - 08:13 am, by: David Johnson(Foxtail)
Wheel alignment: A few points to note with wheel alignments. I find a lot of mechanics today do not understand the whys & wherefores of suspension geometry. My suggestion to you is; Take a look at your report and compare it with the Toyota alignment figures. Are your settings within allowable tolerances? Remember toe-in is there to cancel the scrub effect of camber, which means maximum camber (+) requires maximum toe-in, minimum camber (-) requires minimum toe-in. So you can see it is quite possible to be within the recommended limits and still be wrong. My advise is to check the tyres each time you wash the wheels, run the palm of your hand across the face of the tread if you can feel a sharp edge on the inside of each tread as you pull your hand across you have excessive toe-in, on the other hand if you feel it when you push your hand across the tread you have excessive toe-out. I should also mention if you feel it both ways on the same tread you have an inflation problem.
Now the tricky part, very few mechanics seem to bother about these days. What if you have a toe-in feather on one wheel and toe-out on the other wheel? (steering wheels) This is caused when the toe-out on turns is incorrect. If the car has not had a decent wack the most common cause is unequal length tie rods. How do they become unequal? Lazy mechanics who only adjust one tie rod to correct toe-in. I always had a very large set of callipers so we could compare the tie rod lengths when the job was finished. If the toe-in is correct but the tie rods are not the same length start again. This problem of unequal tie rod lengths is less of a problem with rack and pinion systems than with worm boxes but it will still ware the tyres. For a quick rough check slide under your car and count the visible threads on the tie rods, they should be the same. .
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