[T3] Alignment Questions

[Jim Adney]

On 3 Jul 2016 at 10:04, Daniel Nohejl wrote:

> Well, currently this is the tightest and most "focused" the front end
> has ever been. The car tracks straight and solid and the wheel returns
> strongly (though not overly so) to center after turns. My concern
> isn´t with handling, just with whether or not the logic the shop
> presented me with was sound and whether the camber being .7* off was
> going to present me with any long ter? diffic?lties in terms of tire
> wear or anything else. Based on whatTMs been said so far, I suspect
> ITMll be ok. 

When radials first became popular, the recommendation was to set the 
camber and toe to the manufacturer's minimums. Your camber is right 
down there (and I agree that the caster is what it has to be.) But 
few people understand how camber and toe interact. If the camber is 
minimized, the toe-in should also be minimized. What you've got now 
may be perfectly fine and you'll know in a few tens of thousands of 
miles.

To understand the interaction of camber and toein, consider what 
happens when a round tire rides on a hillside. The uphill side of the 
tire contact patch is at a smaller radius than the downhill side. 
That makes the tire want to turn uphill. The solution to this is to 
point it slightly downhill in the first place. This is WHY we have 
toein.

If there is less camber, less toein is necessary. If the toein and 
camber are not totally compatable, more scrubbing will occur at the 
tire contact patch and this means increased tire wear. Whether this 
means much for our cars, with the extremely light front ends, is 
debatable.

-- 
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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