Kris.Is.Foamin

0* from what I've always understood isn't good for the street, and may be attributing to your wear.

Flite

I'll dial a very little bit of positive in, but factory specs are 0°. I'm not going to dial much in.

Fabrik8

Factory toe specs don't take into account that you're lowered, so your steering geometry isn't stock at the moment either.

burnoutboy

Why can't you be smart slower. I had a decent reply and BAM when I scroll down you'd already put it there. DAMN JOOOO!

TNGChris

That looks like pretty agressive wear from toe out.I know you said that it's currently set at 0-have you checked to make sure there aren't any worn ball joints or tie rod ends allowing the geometry to change?I hadn't seen this mentioned,so sorry if it was and I overlooked it.
Modifying nothing other than lowering the car shouldn't change the Ackerman geometry that I can see.Any bumpsteer should have the same amount of change at this height as it did at stock....What were the caster specs?If for some reason the caster has been greatly increased for some reason,I could see it possibly adding to increased inner wear from the higher camber gain,but I'd think it would still be a smoother pattern of wear...Again,it gets back to looking like a toe issue.
Chris

marlinspike

Hopefully Flite won't mind my piggy-backing off his thread.
Thoughts on this wear?



Admittedly the tire was allowed to run on low pressure (though not extremely low) for a while, which is indicated by the inside shoulder. The car was put on an alignment machine and it wasn't that off (except for too little caster on the opposite side), though I do recall the tire in question had 0.3 deg of camber. I can't remember if was + or - because the machine said it was in spec so I just left it, but when I got home and looked at my factory books more closely I noticed the spec is 0.00 camber +.15/-.35, and the machine was just saying +/- .4.

Also, can I drive on this for a couple thousand more miles?

Cobra4B

Chris see if they'll let you sit in the car while they allign it. Or take some weights to simulate your body weight being in the car. You'd be surprised how much things change.

IMO it looks like toe out. However, like Mr. Autotechsuperstarextraordinaire said.... if the suspension geometry is all srewew from being lowered too mcuh then you may be getting strange toe settings when turning.

Flip the tires side to side and wear out the other side while testing this out. Don't ruin another set of new tires trying to figure this out.

marlinspike

Mercedes actually says that "as a matter of principal" alignment has to be done with a full tank of gas an a person in the driver's seat. I forgot to this when I put mine on the machine, but I'm going to re-do the alignment and will be able to see how much of an impact it makes.

TNGChris

That looks to me like normal wear for an underinflated tire.With that tire inflated properly it should have a bit more life in it considering it'll now actually be weighting the whole middle half of the tire that previously had no wear going on.It may drive a little weird,but I'd have no problem with it if it were mine.

And yes,simulating driver weight during the alignment is a good idea,but shops put half-ass alignments on cars that vary outside factory spec all day long,and they're not eating tires up like the original post.There's something more going on than a slight variation from factory in your alignment specs.OP-have you had a chance to look over everything in the suspension and make sure nothing's loose/broken/worn out?

I run 3 degrees of negative camber on my track/daily car with varying amounts of toe-out(I've been constantly experimenting with that)ranging from 0 to 1/4" out,and when I wear my street tires completely out,they have about 1/32" of smooth variation from the outside to inside.There's no reason an S2000 lowered 2" should have any tire wear issues.

marlinspike

When I say underinflated, I think it got down to 29psi. Didn't realize it was losing air
I normally run 40psi on these tires, but factory spec on the original 205/70-14s was 28psi in the front.