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I just got new tires and an alignment for my Subaru. They gave me a printout of the "before" and "after" numbers.
Each front wheel has five measurements, three of which have specified ranges. Rear wheels have two measurements each. Of the ten measurements with ranges, three of mine were outside the range. Two were corrected to put them within the ranges (camber, front left, and to, rear right). The other, the caster (front right), was slightly outside the range and was not adjusted. (They told me there was no adjustment that could be done on my car - Subaru Impreza.)
I'm just curious: are these typical results? Was my car better off than most? Worse off? It's three years old, 35000 miles.
Is it typical for a car to be out alignment? Yes. That's why it's a good idea to do alignments when you change tires.Beyond that it's really impossible to say particularly since you didn't give any numbers. Even then just depends on the car and is more indicative of how crappy the roads are and how fast you hit speed bumps than anything else. Interesting that there's five measurements. The basics are camber, caster, and toe. Maybe cross-camber and cross-caster. Caster is fairly rare to be adjustable outside sports cars so that's pretty normal.
Caster is fairly rare to be adjustable outside sports cars so that's pretty normal.
I'm no expert but I think this is right. I think it would be difficult and expensive to make even a slight adjustment to the caster.
And while I'm not an expert, I don't think it will make any difference if the caster is slightly out of spec, either in drivability or in tire longevity.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Unless you hit potholes or a curb, your alignment should not be off at 35,000 miles, but then many people do hit things. I only get an alignment when the tire wear indicates that I need it. For the last 4 vehicles, that was never. They all went until trade-in time with only normal tire wear and no alignments with mileage’s:
If you got the mileage you expected from the tires and they wore evenly, the adjustments made were very minor and probably wouldn't make a difference. Toe and camber are the important settings. When toe is off, you will get scrub ridges and cupping. When camber is off, you will get outside or mostly inside wear. Castor, you wouldn't know the difference, even if it is adjustable.
If you got the mileage you expected from the tires and they wore evenly, the adjustments made were very minor and probably wouldn't make a difference. Toe and camber are the important settings. When toe is off, you will get scrub ridges and cupping. When camber is off, you will get outside or mostly inside wear. Castor, you wouldn't know the difference, even if it is adjustable.
When toe if off the tires will wear on the inside if toed out too much, tires will wear on the outside -- toed in too much. Consider the tires toed in, front of tires pointing towards each other. For an example the car goes a hundred feet forward, the outside of the tread is dragged back under one foot. Tread rolls over and wears the outside. Camber has to be WAY off to cause a tire wear problem with radial tires. I once had a car with something bent and NO irregular tire wear with the camber off 4* on one side because but the toe was correct. Caster will cause steering wander if way too negative, pull to one side if badly out of balance side-to-side.
Garbage roads (like we have here in the NE) will easily throw your car out of alignment.
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