Alignment question (long and involved)

[Alexlind123]

My brother is adding things to his e28 to make his rear toe and camber adjustable. If youre interested i can ask him more about it.

[632 Regal]

Of course not but backing over a damn cut pipe or something sometimes cant be avoided. This crap happens all the time but it's said to happen on the road.

I don't think I could intentionally damage the tire

[Mendozart]

This is so bizarre! Today on my way home, I was thinking of rotating my tires. I've been getting a little vibration, at the seat and sometimes slightly at the steering wheel. I went to my local tire shop to see about rotating and checking for bent wheels. Well, once they got the car up on the lift I saw how bad my rears were. Rims look straight but the rotation was out of the question. I have the exact same tires as the ones in your picture. Falken Ziex 512's right? My rears aren't quite as bad as yours, but I can probably only go a couple thousand miles. I thought I would check out this site when I got home and lo and behold I see this post. I'm thinking of getting the adjustable rear camber plates, they're about $270. I didn't realize I already have 25,000 miles on these tires. I only paid $400 for these tires so you get what you pay for.

[liquidtiger720]

mendozart? how big are your wheels?


I'd say 25,000 miles is quite good for the tire size you have (17's or 18's?)

[Mendozart]

They are Racing Dynamics 17 x 8 wheels. I realize that I got an average mileage out of them. I'm probably going to still check my rear toe alignment to be sure.

[DanDombrowski]

Wow, strange coincidence. Did they offer to replace them (or at least pro-rate them) under warraty? They're supposed to be 50,000 mile tires.

Did they give you any garbage about rotation (even though we're not supposed to on the E34) ?

I thought about rear camber correction, but I really don't see myself keeping this car for more than another year, mabye a 18 months. If I can get a new set pro-rated, I can rotate them and keep the wear to half of that in the next 18 months and I'll be done with the car, so I don't think I'm going to sink money into the camber correction. Now, if the problem is in the dogbones or something I can replace and make it better, then I'd be willing to do that. If its in the RTABs, then I'll probably let it go.

Thanks for the heads up Greg, at the very least, I might be able to claim "this happens all the time to these tires". Heck, it might even be true! Let me know how you fare.

[DanDombrowski]

Oh, and yes, they're Falken 512s, but on 15" rims.

[DanDombrowski]

Ryan,

Thanks for the advice. I pretty much knew going in that the best I was going to get for warranty replacement was pro-rating, and thats fine with me.

If I were in their shoes, and I looked at that tire, I would immediately say "alignment problem". I highly doubt that the tires would wear that unevenly just based on design, so I agree with you there. I'm just trying to narrow it down to weather or not its an alignment problem or suspension wear problem, or both. I realize its not really their fault, but I would like to devoid them of being able to take the argument that my alignment is completely to blame and thus weaseling out of any kind of refund, even partial.

So according to Jeff N, there is no rear alignment changes on this car. Is that the consensus? Anywhere I could reference that I could back up that fact?

I'm guessing that if you can't adjust the alignment in the rears, then I've worn out some suspension bushings, either dogbones, rtabs, or something else? Any idea?

I guess my plan is to drop the car off on Monday and see what they say. No replacement though, and mabye I'll just run the tires in the same config until they wear through, or swap sides and do some donuts in the parking lot.....

I wish I had time to take the car in and see what they will do, but I am absolutely booked until next Monday. I'm driving the Volvo today (have to pick up a boat trailer), and tomorrow we're headed to Tampa for the Honda Grand Prix for the weekend.

[Mendozart]

Actually with my car being lowered and having wider tires, this is pretty normal wear. I am going to get the toe checked and I'm almost positive my shocks are worn. I did read somewhere that if you're running wider tires and it being lowered it's a 30,000 mile tire.