Quote:
Originally Posted by Norm Peterson
Well . . . historically I've managed to get about 12,000 miles per 100 treadwear, on tires in the 200 - 240 treadwear range. I could get more if I wasn't so hard-wired to dial the enthusiasm up most every time the road bends. I've been tracking tire wear a bit more closely on the Mustang due to its somewhat extreme all-purpose camber setting (rather more than -1.5° against -0.75° factory-preferred), and it's still even to within no more than 0.02" across the tread on any tire. I have about 12.000 miles on the max-performance summer tires and aboutr 15,000 miles on the OE UHP all-seasons. I've been a stay-in-the-home-office structural engineer/stress analyst for most of my career, and it just doesn't come off as being all that difficult if you've got the patience and a little mechanical aptitude.
I won't try to claim I can hit the numbers to ±0.01°. But considering the variety of driving that makes up the daily stuff this level of precision isn't warranted as long as you're close to numbers appropriate to your own driving.
Determining what those numbers should be does take some thought and experience if you aren't working directly off the basis of somebody else's experience (and for that alone your sets of numbers should be much appreciated by everyone who doesn't just pump gas into the tank, turn the key, and go).
I'm skeptical that the average shop is ±0.01° good like the printouts suggest, or even ±0.03°, considering all of the possible sources of error that exist.
But say you're given a target camber number from whatever source (Chevy's own, yours, mine, other). You can get within about 0.1° of that with a consumer-level digital angle finder, which I'd consider fine given the variable makeup of daily driving.
If I get out my DIY-fabbed camber gauge that uses a dial indicator, as crude and as ugly as that thing is to look at I can get a little closer.
Early on, mostly meaning early 1970's and before, I never could find a shop that would either listen to what I was asking them to do or could get the job done right without screwing something else up in the process. That's where the the incentive for me to jump in with both feet and do a lot of things myself comes from. Alignment is just one of those things.
Norm
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Norm, I do understand what is possible or sometime a necessity. I set the toe on what was supposed to be a magazine ready test car from a highly respected builder with a 25' extension cord. I used a straight edge and level for camber. The alignment equipment was not selected by choice. It was the only stuff I had available in the shop so we made do.
My road course specs for a Mustang are -2.5 camber, 0.50 Toe OUT per wheel and a caster increase of 1 degree. In the rear the best we can do is equalize toe.