The innner two treads have worn extensivly on the front passenger side tire(to the steel belts) and the tires are new. They have about 1000 miles on them. I never had the car aligned,I just purchased it and assumed it was ok. The drivers side is wearing( same spots) but not as bad. I see the ball joints are replaced and the every thing else is pretty tight. No ecesive slop on any thing. It has been a while but what is out of adjustment? IS it toe ? or what? I will take it in for tires and alignmentbut I just wanted to get a little education from you folks. Does this mean the tires are pointed too far out or in or what? Any help is appreciated..... Ron

Read on web site excessive camber? Could this be corrected by shimming up top? It is going in for an alignment. I just have to find a shop that can do this car around here.

This could be excessive 'toe out'.

inner two treads? wouldnt that be too much toe in?

either case, sounds like an alignment is needed...just make sure before you take it that the shop doing it knows , or has access to specs for these cars......
I took mine fairly soon after buying it and ( I had some weird wear too) luckily found a shop with a "seasoned" ( almost my age! lol...) guy who KNEW the specs.....18k later ,it still is good....

Toe in will wear the outside. Imagine your toes pointing in when you walk. You would wear out the outside of your shoes.

Yes Bjorn, I am looking for a seasoned guy. Thanks for the help guys!!! I just don't want to walk into a shop with no Idea. Any one have the specs for these cars,1969 convert,ohc six

I would shoot for 2-6 degrees positive caster. The more the better but keep in mind the more you have the harder it will be to turn. 2-3 would be fine on the street. You probably aren't going to get any more than that with stock arms.
On camber, I would shoot for 0 to -1 degree , the more negative the better the car will take corners at the expense of inner edge wear. For toe, I would go for 1/16" - 1/8" toe in. These are ballpark numbers.

Jim's right, if you are no longer running bias plys the stock alignment is not applicable (although many unknowingly still use it). As a matter of fact, it's quite the opposite.

I wouldn't worry about the caster affecting stiffness unless you are running non-powersteering. As Jim said, shoot for as much caster as can be dialed in with stock arms, aim for about 1/2° negative (stock is positive)and about 1/16 to 1/8" toe-in.

Toss the factory alignment specs in the trash.

A reputable shop will also check your ball joints and control arm bushings before performing the alignment. Those will directly affect camber and caster readings. And bad tie rods will affect toe.

Ok, jacked up the car,everything is tight,ball joints are new and no play anywhere nothing excessivly loose, pulled drums and re serviced bearings. The control arm bushings look good. I printed out the pages with your sugestions,looks like monday I'm in search of new tires and an alignment with pages in hand. Thanks every one!!! Let you all know Ron H....

max. lets get to this one ok buddy. you have whats known as excessive toe-in. you can do something about this yourself! look at the tire and see how much tread is on the tire on the outside versus the inside. you should remove 1/2 that thickness amount of shims from the upper control arm. this should give you a good start to solving the problem! to reference fix in example: if you have 1/8" of tread on the outside you should remove 1/16" of shim. this will get you in the ballpark for an alignment if there isnt a shop nearby you trust.also as others have said you should check the bushings and balljoints. checking the ball joints must be done on the ground with the weight of the car on the tire(no jack!). grab the back of the tire at the top and try rocking the tire outward. if it pops you have one of these 2 items to replace. the only way to detect if the balljoint is bad is to pull it apart and "feel" how loose the ball joint is in motion. hope this help a bit!

I was thinking your pitman arm may need attention.I had the same problem if i recall correctly.

David

The inner first tread is gone and the treads are kind of flared out to the out side of the car, the drivers side is going that way too but not as bad. saw tooth to out side should be toe out am I correct? or too much negative camber moves the top of the tire to the inside of car and wears the inside, I just can't believe how many times I have been under this car and I didn't notice it till yesterday, one thing for sure BF goodrich does put steel belts in their tires....lol, Alignment serch tomorrow
Thanks guys and girls (Vikki)

You'll have to find a shop with an older rack. I had been to several tire and service centers when I needed my cammer aligned. "We can't do a car that old". Thank goodness my old boss Nick still has an old alignment rack at the BP station he owns.

Something to remember is that these cars have a positive camber curve. That means that as the front of the car goes down, the tire moves up relative to the car and the top of the tire tilts out (positive camber).

As the car goes around a corner, the car leans and the tire that is on the outside moves through this positive camber curve. Most people don't think about what the inside tire is doing but it is doing the opposite. As that side of the car rises because of the turn, the inside tire goes down relative to the car and ends up with a bunch of negative camber. This extra negative camber combined with the angle of the car (leaning because of the turn) results in the inside of the tire tread bearing the load on that side of the car and wears the inside edge of the tire off. Depending on how much spirited cornering you do, this can happen in a surprisingly short time.

Bumpsteer, which makes the tire turn away from straight as the suspension moves up and down, can greatly affect the amount of toe when going around a corner and cause the inside tire to drag across the road as the car is cornering.

The solution: drive slowly around corners. Kidding!!! The solution is to get a bigger front sway bar. That keeps the car closer to level as it goes around the corner. That keeps the amount of camber change and bumpsteer to a minimum, which gives you better cornering ability and more even tire wear. A good win/win.

Located a alignment shop today and I'm just waiting for the rain to stop and the 2 tires to come in. The owner of the shop has a 66 chevelle and basically said he grew up on these cars. He said bring it on in and we'll fix it. The nice thing is he's associated with the tire place I buy my tractor tires from. So I guess he's aligning my John Deere 2355 with 205 70 r14's on the front. Thanks everyone for the info!!!! Ron

i had my alignment done 4 years ago using stock factory specs and i have had no tire wear problems or handeling problems?what am i doing wrong?

Terry, I guess you're not driving hard enough or fast enough!

Stock settings still work without excess wear but better tracking can be had with slightly modified settings.

To chew off the edge of your tires in 1000 miles, the toe has to be way out. It would be so far off, you could measure it with a tape ruler, even with the ruler bent in the middle. You could mess up caster and camber and it won't eat tires that fast. Riding on the side of the tires with wrong camber doesn't scrub tires off that fast. And the Firebird doesn't have much camber range to the adjustment anyway, much to my disappointment. You won't get much negative camber which the car would benefit from. I see -1 to +2 as about the max range on my frame. Caster mostly effects pulling and steering effort. More caster improves high speed stability. If you've ever pushed a shopping cart that has bent wheels, you know what I'm talking about.

Look back through the archives for my rants about wheel alignment shops. You'll need to find a seventy year old guy who is still running his own shop to get this job done right. Mostly shops want to "set the toe and let it go" because toe is what eats tires and most customers leave satisifed enough with handling issues in the car but the car isn't chewing tires up anymore. People no longer demand nice handling because they have been driving SUV trucks so long, they forgot.

You are really better off teaching youself about the front end alignment and diy in your driveway than to drop it off at most shops. If you take it to a shop, demand they show you they have alignment shims out in the shop. I bet they don't. Then how can they do the job when they don't have the necessary parts?

I've never had one alignment shop correct the shimmed adjustments when they were out of spec. I have received full refunds twice now when I demanded they prove they attempted to meet specs and the bolts were fully rusty and untouched. The computer print out shows the wrong settings and an "*" next to every out of spec condition. Next the story is "you have a beat up forty year old car that can't be set". You can have a brand new everything in the front end and you'll still hear that advice. Well, they never tried, because there's no profit in an hour spent on one of these cars. They can "set the toe and let it go" on four others in the time it takes to do this job properly. The new cars mostly don't lose caster and camber setting that much and when they do, they are never put back right unless you find an exceptional shop.

I had a problem with our Ford once and it required a camber kit installed for the rear. It cost two trips to the alignment rack and four additonal hours labor to install $30 worth of camber kit to fix the distorted rear end. The front needed the top strut drilled and relocated. It was worth every penny and I had to call many shops before I found one who would agree up front that all four wheels would be correct when the car left their shop. The difference when they were done was the front steered the car instead of the back. That car is nimble now instead of dangerous.

You can set toe in your driveway with a wood trammel and a tape measure. Why spend $80 bucks for only that?

The car will still wear correctly Terry even with the factory alignment. As for handling and highway stability.... it's a matter of "you don't know what you're missing."

Try the new settings, you'll never go back.

From what I recall driving on belted and bias tires, when radials were swapped on a toe adjustment was needed to correct drifting off of the road crown. Being pretty young and not inclined to spend good money for alignments for junkyard tires, I learned a lot of wear patterns. I've since forgotten most of them as I am far less tolerant of wandering, drifting, shuddering cars and tires cost a lot more new.

One of the components of Radial Tuned Suspension is firmer rubber bushings in the control arms. The softer sidewall of the radial tire allowed (or needed, depending on your point of view) firming up the bushings to maintain more or less the same feel and steering response. An older car with radials and small sway bars feels pretty mushy to me.

Let's see, what area of the tire will wear with performance driving and stock suspension components...



Same car, with suspension mods:

I guess I'll have to start cornering harder to wear the out side of the tires,lol

Ron,
Just out of curiosity, is your steering wheel straight when you go down the road? Does the car pull to either side? Wonder?