Hey there guys, Happy Easter for those who celebrate it and Cheers for those who are just happy to get a long weekend off. Happy times, Happy times, or so I thought. Unfortunately, on this long weekend I came to realize that I have two very real issues with my Summer wheel set up. First being alignment.
Now as a rule of getting new rims, tires, and fooling around with suspension. Getting an alignment is like buying insurance. You want to protect your investment. and if you just dropped 800 dollars on new rubber or more for a Rims and tires. you want to make damn sure your not smoking your new tires unintentional. Now generally the only real way to know if your alignment is off is by going to the dealer or tire shop of choice and getting an alignment. *RECOMMENDED. Mind you the poor mans way of checking alignment is pretty accurate but cant give you all the information about your tires alignment. it will give you hints their could be a problem. But nothing more. lol so dont message me back saying. ”Dude, I smoked my tires using your free method of checking alignment.”
The easy way of checking your alignment is by inspecting your brand new tires, every single one. If you look on your tires you will notice that there are very small round dimples on both the inside and outside of the tire. My method to checkign alignment is to closely monitor the treadwear in relations to those dimples. Once you have deviation comparing your left and right tires, (front left compared to front right and the same for the rear) it should give you a reference for how much your toe and possibly camber may be off. This is best done on long drives such as highway driving, for about 200 to 500 km.
Now I should mention, One reason why I love General Tire tires is because they are already building an alignment checking system into some of their product lines. I own a set of General Tire Altimax HP tires and this feature is one of the smartest things I have seen.
Moving on…. It didnt take long for me to see that my left tires both front and rear were burning off fast than the tires on the right. or at least the directing didnt look in the tread wear. some dimples were completely burned away. and remember these dimples are not very big, just small extremely thin bumps. Now i knew I had to get my ass into a shop and get an alignment. NOW. the next morning. Easter Monday to be exact. I got my car in the shop and up on the alignment machine.
It it was a good thing I did go in there, it seems to me my alignment was off. Not super huge, but still outside of spec. When I asked my friend and other techs at the shop, I was told anything outside of spec, is SUPER HUGE. And can mean the difference of a tire like this lasting 50,000 miles and 20,000 miles fully cooked.
If you look below you can see for youself the difference of how much my left tires (TOE’d outward) both were.
After finding out the alignment news it made me think. How long was it message up for? My last alignment checkup was about last spring. I knew alignment wasnt responsible for the premature death of my Dunlops, because everyone was fine up till then. But maybe something happened between now and then. sigh… no way to know, but at least its found and being resolved. After 25 minutes I was told my car was ready and I went in to see the final result of adjustments.
Perfect. And this has put a smile on my face. Special thanks to the guys at Active Green and Ross in scarborough at Ellesmere and Kennedy for the assistance with the alignment.
I will post on my second problem a little later after I assess the situation further. But here is a hint.
