Strange tire wear -- Any thoughts? Google finds similar

If you or your mechanic has been rotating the tires front to back only, then it is indeed possible that you have too much positive camber (top of tire tilting out) on one of your left side wheels. As to why there would not be Google results with people with right side tire wear, I cannot say. Typically, on a strut type suspension, this angle does not change unless there is some type of collision or replacement of parts. Toe wear (too much difference in the measurement between the fronts of the tires as opposed to the rears of the tires) would show up on both front tires.

 

The rotation does not "cause" the issue, but will spread the damage to more than one tire. Example: If LF tire is wearing on the outside due to improper alignment, and you rotate it to the LR, eventually both the LF and LR tires will be worn on the outside.
If you get an alignment, all will be well, and that should prevent any further tire damage if it is done correctly. Make sure you mention to the shop the tire wear you are experiencing, even though they should know what to look for by viewing the tires.

If the shop gives you a printout of the alignment before and after, please post it.

 

My 07 has been fine for years then just lately I did my tire check and found the Inside edge of front driver gone.
Very odd just an inch wide inside strip gone to bare. Happened fast. Usually look closely at the tires every 5k. The tires were getting worn all around so had the car aligned first time ever with new tires.

Bought the tires first then a month later had the alignment done.

Toe was out on both fronts. The car feels alot better now much lighter on its feet when you steer into a corner.

Make sure you get the full readout on 4 wheels too. Here they charged $89 + tax one time alignment 4 wheel.

But the moral of my story is the minor amount of toe misalignment could not account for this unusual wear pattern. Tires just do strange things at the end of there life. What kind of tires are they?

 

I would take an experienced alignment tech that really knows what he's doing with basic equipment over a minimum wage oil jockey with a fancy machine any day.

 

Me too I'd actually take someone who knows what they're doing with string over someone with a fancy machine and minimal knowledge any day.

In general it takes an excessive amount of camber to wear a tire on the street. Wear issues are almost always toe related, and in fact I doubt your car is adjustable for camber in the rear anyways. If both the front and rear of the same side are wearing more, you could well have hit something at some point throwing it out on one side only.

 

Hmmm - Tire wear - so many variables. It may be that your tires just simplywear oddly. It can happen ... even within the particular batch of a name brand tires. We have Michelin Hydroedges on one hybrid, that just wear & wear & wear & wear. 100k miles and they still don't look too shabby. Why did they take them off the market? Could it be because they last too long? On the other hand, the Ecopia's we have on our other car are notoriously noted for being junk when it comes to wear issues. If not the tires them selves, your issue could be either one of, or a combo of alignment and driving style and/or tire pressure. Those are the only variables. Higher pressure is ALWAYS better, when it comes to tire wear/preservation.

The all-wheel-drive Lexus hybrid SUV has both front AND rear alignment settings . . . AND, if that's not bad enough, you have to align at a shop that actually does both front/rear alignments. It's IMPOSSIBLE to align without 'the-machine'. In addition, part of some vehicles' alignment is done via the hybrids' 'system' ... changing toe-in/out as needed - on the fly. IOW, it's becoming more and more complex as is the nature of most cars. 2-wheel alignment? I suppose you could do it w/out the machine ... but it's questionable now days. These new fangled rides aint 57 chevys any more.

Let us know what the final deal is!
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Do you have any more info about such a suspension system hill? I've never heard of a suspension system that is adaptive on the fly like that in even the most exotic cars. It'd be quite a feat to move those load bearing adjustment points on the fly.

I am also not aware of any system that should need much more than a string, measuring tape, and a right angle to align. It's just nuts and bolts and basic trig.

 

You can google/youtube to find tons of vehicles that require 4 wheel alignment. Lexus (even non-hybrids) has been requiring it for about a decade on some of there vehicles, as do BMW and several others. Here's just the 1st one (Lexus) that poped up for you to check out:

But yea ... lots of 'em there for you to check out.
String alignment? Hard to believe some folks believe this is accurate. How hard is it to believe that alignment folks would NOT spend 10's of thousands of dollars on 4wheel alignment equipment if you could do it as accurate w/ a string. We wasted 2 sets of tires until Lexus figured out that it was an ECU sending inadequate tow-in signals - causing outer tire wear. Once replaced - no more irregular wear. So how can a string find a defective ECU.
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I wasn't asking about four wheel alignment (I didn't realize that anyone seriously still thought aligning two wheels was ok). I was asking about your statement that the Lexus was changing toe on the fly. I've never heard of that before other than the normal deflection that happens under load. I could see it being beneficial on a race car. It would be dangerous on a street car because any active adjustment would have to assume a certain starting point, but street driven cars are knocked out of alignment routinely. Adjusting toe dynamically would then have the potential to a) wear out the tires extremely quickly, and b) have the potential to induce dangerous handling characteristics to the car.

There is nothing magical about an alignment machine. Their primary purpose is to allow techs of minimal skill level be able to do a good enough job quickly. An expert with a string, tape measure and some right angles will do a better job than any tech with a gold plated machine. Race cars which are much more sensitive to alignment settings do most or all of their alignments with string. Anything fancier than that is usually done for ease of use, not because it does a better job.

 

Seriously.

Align Your Car With SmartStrings, SmartCamber | Smart Racing Products

All that the above kit does is simplify the process. String, a ruler, a right angle and some math is all it takes. This just saves time. Spend some time at a racetrack and you'll see lots of people doing it this way. We can do it in between sessions at our club days, and get camber and toe to better than .05 degrees repeatably. That's excellent precision when most cars are spec'ed at +/- 0.25 - 0.5 degrees or so.

 

I have been going to an alignment shop for years that uses hand tools and not machines to align. They have corrected multiple mistakes by tire companies, Firestone and Goodyear, that have given me false information about their tires under warranty ! Not to mention upsales for tie rods and you name it.

I will put this company up against any computerized machine any day of the week. The trouble with these machines is that they need to be calibrated on a routine basis and very few do this anywhere near the required frequency. So like computers, garbage in and garbage out. Especially with minimum wage kids operating them.

 

Is rear camber (readily) adjustable on second gen? With 3rd gen I think you have to put in aftermarket shims?

 

Yes gen2 rear camber and toe can be done with aftermarket shims or even home made it's not difficult. There is a machine that can bend the axle to the correct shape to give the correct settings. Toyota just change the axle.

John (Britprius)

 

little bit behind the times?, been around for years Weissach axle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Mazda RX 7 has the same type of on-the-fly tow-in adjustability. But yeah ... I didn't want to get into a knowledge pissing contest ... but it just seemed obvious how alignment changes in motion would be necessary on some vehicles. Take our range rover for instance. It can change heights by about a foot while on the fly/ driving, so obviously there has to be caster / camber adjustments made accordingly ... which btw, was what I meant to say when I misspoke and referred to toe-in previously. But it's kind of off topic to what the OP was asking for anyway. No big deal.
Still, shenyang is correct about string alignment ... it isn't as dead a method as I originally thought. If you read up on it - there are as many for/against string alignment as there are string alignment people that are for/against machine alignment.
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