This is why your vehicle can pull and not wear out tires, or it can drive perfectly straight and destroy them in a hurry! So: Camber and caster will cause your vehicle to pull if they're uneven, but will cause little tire wear, while toe in won't cause your vehicle to pull, but can cause extremely fast tire wear. With enough of an error in toe your tires can wear out in a real hurry, the worst we've seen is 3 days on brand new tires! And 5,000 miles on brand new tires is not at all unusual, even though the vehicle may track perfectly straight down the road! On the other hand, though it may not cause a pull, it is the single greatest cause of premature tire wear. Therefore, toe in (or out, or both) can definitely make your steering wheel crooked when driving straight, but it almost never causes a pull. However, even if one is in and one is out, you will simply turn the steering wheel to go straight down the road. Obviously, you can have toes and heels even (zero toe) or you can have one pointing out and one in. If you look down at your feet and your toes are farther out than your heels, this simulates "toe out", if your toes are farther in than your heels (pigeon toed) that simulates "toe in". (Note: caster is only significant on wheels that turn, so unless your vehicle has rear wheel steering, caster will only be adjustable in the front.) Again, caster, like camber can cause pulls, but caster will rarely cause much wear. So the vehicle would pull to the side with the "fork" further back. So if you think of the two front wheels like a pair of cycle forks spread out at a distance, more positive caster on one side would mean that one of the forks of the "bike" was further forward than the other, (though this is really just an angle measured in 10ths of degrees). Camber may pull toward positive (more tilt in at the top) but caster will pull toward negative, or less caster. So we are talking about more or less positive caster. As far as we know, all four wheel vehicles are designed with positive caster (forks out towards the front at the bottom). However, just like with camber, vehicle pull is not caused by too much or too little caster, but by side to side imbalance. If you have too much positive caster, the vehicle will be harder to turn. If you don't have enough positive caster (forks too little angle toward the front) the car will wander and feel unstable. It is no different on four wheel vehicles. Positive caster is what allows you to ride your bike with no hands. Bicycle forks angle out towards the front at the bottom, (or in towards the vehicle at the top) which is "positive" caster. You can think of this angle like the forks of a bicycle. However, a difference in camber side to side will not result in tire wear, only extreme amounts of camber, negative or positive, will cause tire wear, but this wear will be relatively slow.Ĭaster is a little harder to explain, but it has to do with the angle between the ball joints, or on a strut car, from the top of the strut to the lower ball joint. 5 degrees positive camber on the other, it will pull to the 1 degree side (since 1 is more than. Or if it has 1 degree positive camber on one side and. 5 degree side (since -.5 is more than -1). 5 degrees negative camber on one side and 1 degree negative camber on the other side it will pull to the. If camber is the cause of your pull, it will always pull to the side with more camber (from negative to positive). Camber can cause a pull, but it doesn't do it by being extremely negative or positive, but by being different from side to side. Typical camber on modern vehicles is from 0 to 2 degrees negative (in at the top), while many classic cars (50's to 70's) used 0 to 1 degree positive camber (out at the top). If it tilts out at the top (away from the vehicle), it has "positive" camber. If the tire tilts in at the top (towards the vehicle), it has "negative" camber. Throughout this article, we will be referring back to alignment and the specific kinds of uneven wear it causes, but in this section we are dealing with vehicle pull, and we'll seek to explain our opening statement.Īlignment has three main parameters: Camber, Caster and Toe-in.Ĭamber is the tilt of the tire from top to bottom. Vehicle pull can be caused by misalignment, but it can also be caused by uneven wear on the tires, a low tire on one side, or a tire separation. To do this, we'll divide this article into three sections: In this article, we will discuss the common causes of vehicle pull - alignment or otherwise. A vehicle can have a pull and wear the tires just fine, or it can drive perfectly straight and wear the tires out in a hurry. We talk to people all the time that think that because their car doesn't pull to one side the other, that it therefore must be in alignment.
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