So I replace the front struts on my Jetta and it will be a few days before I can get an alignment.
Just for the heck of it I push the camber all the way it will go negative and tighten the strut bolts. And I am surprised at the difference it makes in the turns. (I am sure the new Konis help too.....) So the question is how much -camber is too much for the street? If the tires shred, back off?
Excessive toe angle will have a much greater effect on tire life than excessive camber. In my Brighton's first incarnation I ran Solo2 events in STS (1.8 liters of fury coupled with all-season tires, HA!) because I love to tinker and H Stock didn't allow the use of camber bolts. I had -2.7 degrees of camber at the front and -1.0 degrees in the rear with 0 toe at both ends. I kept the alignment this way for not only Solo2 but Rallycross and street driving as well (all on the same tires). The only wear I noticed was on the outer edge due to the tall, flaccid sidewalls rolling under during turns on tarmac.
I put about 50,000 miles on that set of tires.
I just changed some tires on my H Stock focus (street tires), and found that the inside edge gets corded about the same time as the wear bars show on the outer edge of the tire.
No auto-X on those tires, have other tires for that so these were only street driven. also got about 50k or so on those tires. YMMV but the jetta is similar front end setup to the focus...
edit: that was with 1* negative camber
I ran about 3* neg on my last Mk2 Jetta. I ran a whole summer like this on the street and autocross with Nitto NT-01's, which are much stiffer than your average street tire. I ran 0 toe. SOME increased wear on the inside edges, but pretty minimal. It really does amazing things for front cornering grip. It was enough camber that some of the guys at work that are kinda into cars asked if my something on my front suspension was broken...
I will kick in too- when I used to autocross my third gen Camaro, on 60 series tires, (It was the 80's after all) I ran about 1.5 neg, with 0 toe, and as long as I started a new pair of tires on the rear, and got them about 1/2 worn before they went to the front, I never had any noticeable trouble with excessive inner wear.
Tramlining down a worn out highway, though...hideous.
As stated, toe is the destroyer of tires. 6K on my mazda with a toe issue destroyed the tires- like.5* camber....
50K on my wagon with -2.5* camber and the tires are perfect.
The problem is that when you slam the camber to max, it will toe out quite a bit.....You will noticeably wear the tires in a few days. I think the rule of thumb is under -3* camber is fine for the street.
I had both my Neons aligned to -2.5 or so, with zero toe. EVERY time, the alignment shop would swear up and down I would destroy my tires, and made me sign a release holding them harmless from tire wear.
EVERY time, I actually got better front tire wear with this setup, driven entirely on the street. In fact, I quit rotating my tires because the fronts would wear perfectly evenly across the tread, instead of the outside shoulder first. I would replace the fronts 2 to 1 with the rears.
I found that somewher around 1-1.5 negative will not adversely affect tire wear. Regular rotation helps. Any time you change camber you need to reset the toe. For track days etc. I ran my ZX2SR at 2.5 to 3 neg. 0 toe. Rear was left at the stock 1.5 neg. One thing I found is that increasing caster allows you to run less camber.
Toe destroys tired because it is literally like dragging the tire sideways down the road.
Camber doesn't destroy tires so much as toe, but it certainly doesn't promote even tire wear! (Well, in some cases it might)
I always ran -2.5 degrees on my MKI GTI, it handled best there. I used the old falken auto-x tires on it and did 45k on them no problem.
Good information, thank you all very much! Now to get a tie rod replaced and the alignment reset..
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