Hi. I have 97 Maxima with 125k on the clock. Before I got it, the owner hit a curb during an ice storm and bent the driver's side control arm. He replaced the control arm and stabilizer bar and had it aligned. I put new tires on and now, about 17k miles later, I am getting severe inner edge tire wear on the front on both sides. Car handles fine on highway. No shimmy etc. I have tried wiggling the tires at 9 and 3 and 12 and 6 and can find no play. Struts seem fine in the bounce test. I keep them about 35 psi.


Using the string method and trigonometry in my driveway, I have determined that the steering geometry is as follows:


Toe Out passenger side: 0.8mm should be 2mm of Toe In
Toe Out drivers side: 1.6mm, should be 2 mm of Toe In

Camber: 0.75 degrees positive both sides , should be 0.25 degrees negative.

its weird that even though the camber is slightly positive its not wearing the outside much.

My question is whether you guys think the approximately 1 degree of toe out (vs 2mm toe in) is what is wearing the inner edge?

 

Just take it to a shop for an alignment.

 

short answer...yes.
camber being out doesn't help either.

then you have the issue where the car was hit.

like the previous poster mentioned...get a professional alignment. it's less than the cost of 1 new tire (YMMV of course depending on location)

 

Yeah - thanks guys. I was intending to get it aligned at a good shop anyway before wasting another set of front tires. I just wanted to understand what is going on before talking to the shop. All I have to do now is find a shop that knows what they are doing. I think I'll find a collision alignment shop.

The guy I got the car from said he got free lifetime alignments on it after he replaced the control arm and had it aligned! I'd not get anywhere near that shop !

 

a collision shop will throw your car on the rack and pull the frame so it's straight again...or at least get the unibody to align correctly. to get this done will set you back a few hundred bucks.

 

Just an update to close the loop on this for now. I took the car to an alignment shop that I trust, even though it was not a collision shop. They said they would let me know if it could be aligned without charging me for the assessment.
The
Apparently, I got confused between negative and positive camber when I did my measurements and the car was in spec with respect to camber. As I suspected, the toe in was off, but they were able to fix that easily, as expected. The caster was off on one front wheel, but they said that would not wear the tires and could not be easily adjusted. Since it doesn't seem to have any handling problems they suggested not worrying about it. The toe in on one of the rear wheels was also off and not adjustable, but didn't seem to be wearing the tires, so probably also no harm no foul. They rotated the tires and I will keep my eye on them closely to make sure the problem has been corrected. Hopefully the before and after printout will upload properly. Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

rear toe is still messed up after adjustment

 

Yes, I know, but supposedly its not adjustable.

 

oh yes that's right...the beam suspension.

 

Green is good red is bad, stay away from the red. The left camber is still in the red 1.9 get that in the 0.5 than your good.