Tires and Tribulations (Wear Acadamy)
#32
01-03-2015, 01:59 PM
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Reposting this from another thread hoping it adds some info with regards to alignment specs.
First a thread on troubleshooting front end issues:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...-problems.html
Next, alignment:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...l#post11554286
Checking the alignment yourself is actually pretty easy but a bit time consuming. You'll need is some thin string like fishing line or kite line, a good accurate ruler or tape measure and a digital level - or smartphone app.
Some good links with how tos:
Do It Yourself Alignment Tips
Determining Wheel Alignment - String Your Car - Circle Track Magazine
I actually use the Smart String system to do the alignment on my race car but you can get by w/o a "system" and use some jackstands instead.
One extra piece of info that I'd like to add with respect to camber settings, it's a good idea to think about how much weight you're going to have on the truck on a regular basis in order to determine how much front camber you want to run. As the rear of the truck gets loaded down, the front will raise up a bit. As front ride height raises (measure from the street to the fender lip), camber will change. What started as 0 or a bit of negative camber, could quickly become positive camber as the front end raises a bit from the rear being loaded up. If you are towing heaving, you may want to start with a bit extra negative camber in the front so that it zeroes out and doesn't become positive.
Hope that makes sense...
First a thread on troubleshooting front end issues:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...-problems.html
Next, alignment:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...l#post11554286
Good video on F250 ball joints:
How To Replace Worn Ball Joints Ford F250 Truck - YouTube
This thread has a lot of info on alignments which will help anyone with questions on what camber, caster and toe mean. It also has the specs with the OEM range of tolerance. The range is so large that it is total BS....
Alignment specs and recommendations - PowerStrokeNation : Ford Powerstroke Diesel Forum
However, the specs on here look more normal/accurate:
front end alignment specs - Diesel Forum - TheDieselStop.com
Here is what you should be looking for with specs:
Camber: As similar as possible comparing left to right. Somewhere between -0.5 and -1.0 degrees would be great. If you have -0.5 degrees on the driver side, you want -0.5 degrees on the passenger side or as close as possible. Try and stay within -0.3 difference. You do NOT want positive camber.
Caster: You want them to try and get close to the max of the range as it will give you a more stable feel. The max spec is 5.5 degrees. Ask them to try and get. A minimum of 3.5degrees is what you should accept and if you can't get it try and figure out why. You typically want 0.5 degree more caster on the passenger side to counteract road crown and help the truck track straight. So if you get 3.5* on the driver side, a nice number for the passenger side would be between 3.5* and 4.0*.
The manual says 3.5 as the average value with a tolerance of 2 degrees which is an idiotically huge friggin tolerance. Tolerance should be no larger than 0.5 degrees.
Toe: You want a little bit of Toe-In on the front tires and you want the same number on both sides. Toe-In is +. Toe-Out is a negative value. Your toe setting looks perfect at +0.06 degrees and +0.05 degrees left and right respectively.
Thrust Angle should be 0. Thrust Angle at 0 means your truck isn't "dog tracking" so the front and rear wheels are directly in line with each other.
Precision is the single most important thing about alignments. The difficult thing about alignments is that it really depends that the person doing the alignment understands that minor variances are not acceptable and will lead to odd feeling truck or car. If they understand that and care enough to do a GREAT job, the difference from one side to the other will be within one tenth - or very small. Any chain shop generally doesn't give a flying bats tail in my experience. The cheaper the shop the worse the alignment as the tech isn't getting paid to care. Those offering lifetime alignments are really offering a life time of crappy alignments.
When you call to make an appointment, ask them whether they can align to your specs. If they say no, move onto the next shop. Try to find where the guys that race and autox (autocross) take their cars. Those are the shops that will have a decent alignment tech that cares. They may ask you to pay more which is fine since they can easily spend over an hour if they are taking the time to do it right.
Whenever I move somewhere new and am looking for an alignment shop, I usually search the regional forums for Miata, BMW, Corvette or Porsche forums for recommendations. Those guys often know where to go. Then call and see if they do trucks and confirm they will do to your specs.
How To Replace Worn Ball Joints Ford F250 Truck - YouTube
This thread has a lot of info on alignments which will help anyone with questions on what camber, caster and toe mean. It also has the specs with the OEM range of tolerance. The range is so large that it is total BS....
Alignment specs and recommendations - PowerStrokeNation : Ford Powerstroke Diesel Forum
However, the specs on here look more normal/accurate:
front end alignment specs - Diesel Forum - TheDieselStop.com
Here is what you should be looking for with specs:
Camber: As similar as possible comparing left to right. Somewhere between -0.5 and -1.0 degrees would be great. If you have -0.5 degrees on the driver side, you want -0.5 degrees on the passenger side or as close as possible. Try and stay within -0.3 difference. You do NOT want positive camber.
Caster: You want them to try and get close to the max of the range as it will give you a more stable feel. The max spec is 5.5 degrees. Ask them to try and get. A minimum of 3.5degrees is what you should accept and if you can't get it try and figure out why. You typically want 0.5 degree more caster on the passenger side to counteract road crown and help the truck track straight. So if you get 3.5* on the driver side, a nice number for the passenger side would be between 3.5* and 4.0*.
The manual says 3.5 as the average value with a tolerance of 2 degrees which is an idiotically huge friggin tolerance. Tolerance should be no larger than 0.5 degrees.
Toe: You want a little bit of Toe-In on the front tires and you want the same number on both sides. Toe-In is +. Toe-Out is a negative value. Your toe setting looks perfect at +0.06 degrees and +0.05 degrees left and right respectively.
Thrust Angle should be 0. Thrust Angle at 0 means your truck isn't "dog tracking" so the front and rear wheels are directly in line with each other.
Precision is the single most important thing about alignments. The difficult thing about alignments is that it really depends that the person doing the alignment understands that minor variances are not acceptable and will lead to odd feeling truck or car. If they understand that and care enough to do a GREAT job, the difference from one side to the other will be within one tenth - or very small. Any chain shop generally doesn't give a flying bats tail in my experience. The cheaper the shop the worse the alignment as the tech isn't getting paid to care. Those offering lifetime alignments are really offering a life time of crappy alignments.
When you call to make an appointment, ask them whether they can align to your specs. If they say no, move onto the next shop. Try to find where the guys that race and autox (autocross) take their cars. Those are the shops that will have a decent alignment tech that cares. They may ask you to pay more which is fine since they can easily spend over an hour if they are taking the time to do it right.
Whenever I move somewhere new and am looking for an alignment shop, I usually search the regional forums for Miata, BMW, Corvette or Porsche forums for recommendations. Those guys often know where to go. Then call and see if they do trucks and confirm they will do to your specs.
Checking the alignment yourself is actually pretty easy but a bit time consuming. You'll need is some thin string like fishing line or kite line, a good accurate ruler or tape measure and a digital level - or smartphone app.
Some good links with how tos:
Do It Yourself Alignment Tips
Determining Wheel Alignment - String Your Car - Circle Track Magazine
I actually use the Smart String system to do the alignment on my race car but you can get by w/o a "system" and use some jackstands instead.
One extra piece of info that I'd like to add with respect to camber settings, it's a good idea to think about how much weight you're going to have on the truck on a regular basis in order to determine how much front camber you want to run. As the rear of the truck gets loaded down, the front will raise up a bit. As front ride height raises (measure from the street to the fender lip), camber will change. What started as 0 or a bit of negative camber, could quickly become positive camber as the front end raises a bit from the rear being loaded up. If you are towing heaving, you may want to start with a bit extra negative camber in the front so that it zeroes out and doesn't become positive.
Hope that makes sense...
#33
01-03-2015, 05:46 PM
Joe - we're all glad that you didn't have to endure what many of us have. Could you share what your Caster, Camber, and Toe are set to, so we can all gain from your happy experience?
This coincides with some other confusion I ran into: The 2WD has independent coil spring suspension, the 4WD has solid axle with leaf spring suspension (unless the 2002 is different). The camber spec on the solid axle is minute, where the camber spec on the 2WD is more aggressive to compensate for the angle change when the front dives. The camber will not change on my 2000 4WD, even if I were to drop 6000 pounds on Stinky's *** - the solid axle is... well... a fixed angle.
While reading the links provided above, I can see where my front end guys may have gotten a bit aggressive with the camber, but I suspect that's more of a regional thing. As Cody pointer out in another thread I had going, the predominant crown of the road (and the truck ruts) in your driving environment play a big role in what works best for your truck... as if this wasn't complicated enough.
How 'bout it experts? Have I go that part right?
...As the rear of the truck gets loaded down, the front will raise up a bit. As front ride height raises (measure from the street to the fender lip), camber will change. What started as 0 or a bit of negative camber, could quickly become positive camber as the front end raises a bit from the rear being loaded up. If you are towing heaving, you may want to start with a bit extra negative camber in the front so that it zeroes out and doesn't become positive....
While reading the links provided above, I can see where my front end guys may have gotten a bit aggressive with the camber, but I suspect that's more of a regional thing. As Cody pointer out in another thread I had going, the predominant crown of the road (and the truck ruts) in your driving environment play a big role in what works best for your truck... as if this wasn't complicated enough.
How 'bout it experts? Have I go that part right?
#34
01-03-2015, 06:07 PM
Rich, I think you missed the point...
Drive your truck. Its a truck. I'll be happy to post up one of my alignment reports the next time I get an alignment... Since its been a few years, maybe I will get one with my new set of tires.
When I do, I will drop it off at Les Schwabs, and pick it up a few hours later. It will still be a lifted 1 ton truck...
Drive your truck. Its a truck. I'll be happy to post up one of my alignment reports the next time I get an alignment... Since its been a few years, maybe I will get one with my new set of tires.
When I do, I will drop it off at Les Schwabs, and pick it up a few hours later. It will still be a lifted 1 ton truck...
#35
01-03-2015, 06:11 PM
#36
01-03-2015, 06:32 PM
#37
01-03-2015, 06:43 PM
Of course I am known for hiding things... LMFAO...
Sorry... I'll drop out again... Just find it funny we need ANOTHER thread from the same OP, talking about the same thing AGAIN...
#38
01-03-2015, 06:44 PM
#39
01-03-2015, 09:29 PM
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Could you please explain to me what you mean by this statement I'm kinda lost on what you mean by:
"I'll change one thing about your microlist - siping could be better for tire wear, but I would argue that if it is better, the original designer didn't do their job to make that tire wear correctly. For sure I wouldn't put a siping machine to any Michelin tires if you're after wear."
Thanks for your input
Let's take a look at what Discount Tire says:
Tire Siping | Siping Tires | Siping a Tire | Discount Tire
Now, I'm a big fan of Discount. In fact, I send all my friends there when they are tire shopping. The folks at Discount have always been nice to my wife and kids, they don't fill their waiting rooms with girlie magazines masquerading as car mags (total turn off for my lovely bride) and their techs know what they're doing.
However, this siping write-up has some semi-truths and half-truths to me. Yes, they probably saw better snow traction from the Michelin Pilot Sport after adding sipes. Of course.... it's a summer tire. But who would take a $200+ summer tire, add sipes so they could "drive in snow" - and then wreck their ability to rock their sports car down a twisty road when the sun and dry weather comes out again?
But I digress. This question was about wear
Let's examine this statement:"Wear-robbing heat ... [is] also minimized."
I'm not so sure. On one hand, adding sipes can introduce a radiator effect and help the tire dissipate heat from the tread. But at the same time, dividing the tread blocks into more, smaller blocks can introduce more flexibility - which would probably negate any positive effect.
To your specific question, from my experience ... when a tire designer is engineering the tread design, sipe placement is always done with an eye towards wear. However many other tire performances have to be taken into account. If adding sipes to a tire makes it wear better, then that tells me one of two things: 1) The original design wasn't done very well and the sipes should have been there in the first place or 2) Sipes were left off in the original design for very good reason, and adding them may have helped the wear but other tire performances will be negatively affected. Like the sport tire mentioned above, maybe the sipes could help wear but then there will be entirely too much tread squirm and hot laps around Road Atlanta won't be nearly as stable. Or adding sipes to a block type tread we'd put on our 4x4 trucks ... snow might be better, wear, maybe - but drive that thing over miles of gravel roads and see what happens to the tread rubber.
To the last part of what I wrote, I can say that the Michelin Man puts a ton of effort into making tires that wear right. It's part of our reputation. So chances are adding sipes won't help at all or make the wear worse.
That was long winded but hopefully it make sense!
#40
01-04-2015, 03:36 AM
GoCamping - your siping comments make sense. That always ticked the back of my head - if siping is such a great thing, why is it not part of the tire design? I have read this in your link, and at my tire store waiting area (that brochure is made by the siping machine company, and it has different tire store logos printed across the top):
Why Don't My Tires Come Siped From the Manufacturer?
Our siping process doesn't remove ANY rubber from the tread allowing the individual sipes to support each other. A molded sipe leaves vacant gaps in the tread. Siping creates edges without gaps. To sipe (in mass production) after the molding process would be too expensive and time consuming for the manufacturer.
#41
01-04-2015, 10:27 AM
Very glad you know all you need to know about your truck.
Those of us new to diesels and heavy trucks learn something from and welcome each and every one of these kinds of threads, and the people willing to take the time to share what they've found or know.
Never have understood what the big deal is about having multiple threads about the same thing. So what????????????????????
#42
01-04-2015, 01:26 PM
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Why Don't My Tires Come Siped From the Manufacturer?
Our siping process doesn't remove ANY rubber from the tread allowing the individual sipes to support each other. A molded sipe leaves vacant gaps in the tread. Siping creates edges without gaps. To sipe (in mass production) after the molding process would be too expensive and time consuming for the manufacturer.
Our siping process doesn't remove ANY rubber from the tread allowing the individual sipes to support each other. A molded sipe leaves vacant gaps in the tread. Siping creates edges without gaps. To sipe (in mass production) after the molding process would be too expensive and time consuming for the manufacturer.
Or you could look really closely for a tire company that makes their molded sipes in such a way for them to work together - and have a balanced level of performances out of the box with no need to modify
#43
01-04-2015, 09:26 PM
Postmaster
Absolutely. Of course this is all with the disclaimer that although I've been in the field for 17 years I still claim that I have lots to learn and certainly don't know all there is to know about tires.
To the last part of what I wrote, I can say that the Michelin Man puts a ton of effort into making tires that wear right. It's part of our reputation. So chances are adding sipes won't help at all or make the wear worse.
That was long winded but hopefully it make sense!
To the last part of what I wrote, I can say that the Michelin Man puts a ton of effort into making tires that wear right. It's part of our reputation. So chances are adding sipes won't help at all or make the wear worse.
That was long winded but hopefully it make sense!
But now after being schooled on sipes I am starting see why the LTX M/S2 would be worth the extra money. But I have yet to hear much about the redesigned T/A2. I have often wondered and thought that a XPS would be best for mileage and more even wear but was worried about it as a All Season tire. LTX M/S2 is a 70k tire and the XPS is only 60K so that blows that out of the water.
I actually use the Smart String system to do the alignment on my race car but you can get by w/o a "system" and use some jackstands instead.
One extra piece of info that I'd like to add with respect to camber settings, it's a good idea to think about how much weight you're going to have on the truck on a regular basis in order to determine how much front camber you want to run. As the rear of the truck gets loaded down, the front will raise up a bit. As front ride height raises (measure from the street to the fender lip), camber will change. What started as 0 or a bit of negative camber, could quickly become positive camber as the front end raises a bit from the rear being loaded up. If you are towing heaving, you may want to start with a bit extra negative camber in the front so that it zeroes out and doesn't become positive.
Hope that makes sense...
Seeing other FEA specs is always helpful.If you are doing FEA on your race car you might like some of the camber/ caster gauges Longacre makes at a fair price. It's on my wish list of tools to own.
Longacre Vial Caster Camber Gauges
I agree 100% on the camber and in the past on cars I have owned I have even preloaded the drivers seat with 200lbs to get camber correct with driver in it. Now on my truck I went with 1/2* camber and I only tow heavy once in a blue moon most of the time it is only 8500lbs / 1000lbs tongue weight so my camber really doesn't change much if at all. But that is something that guys that haul heavy 5th wheels all over the country should keep in mind.
Joe - we're all glad that you didn't have to endure what many of us have. Could you share what your Caster, Camber, and Toe are set to, so we can all gain from your happy experience?
This coincides with some other confusion I ran into: The 2WD has independent coil spring suspension, the 4WD has solid axle with leaf spring suspension (unless the 2002 is different). The camber spec on the solid axle is minute, where the camber spec on the 2WD is more aggressive to compensate for the angle change when the front dives. The camber will not change on my 2000 4WD, even if I were to drop 6000 pounds on Stinky's *** - the solid axle is... well... a fixed angle.
How 'bout it experts? Have I go that part right?
This coincides with some other confusion I ran into: The 2WD has independent coil spring suspension, the 4WD has solid axle with leaf spring suspension (unless the 2002 is different). The camber spec on the solid axle is minute, where the camber spec on the 2WD is more aggressive to compensate for the angle change when the front dives. The camber will not change on my 2000 4WD, even if I were to drop 6000 pounds on Stinky's *** - the solid axle is... well... a fixed angle.
How 'bout it experts? Have I go that part right?
Joe if you are reading this you mean to tell me you didn't keep the spec sheet after your last FEA ?? Even my wife has enough sense to put the spec sheet in the glovebox. Or is it that you just don't want to share with us?? If you aren't going to be helpful why do you bother to post??
Now Rich as far as what you are saying about the difference in 4wd and 2wd. I do believe there is some truth in the fact that a 2wd will articulate up and down more than a 4wd but I find it hard to believe that it would really effect the camber alot on the highway at highway speeds. On other road surfaces I do believe that would be a big factor. But that would account for some differences. But honestly any time you take weight on or off the front axle even if it is a 2wd or 4wd it will change the camber. To prove that all you need is a bubble level on the front tire up/ down and jack up the front bumper a couple of inches or jack up the back end and that bubble on the level will move.
Last edited by BadDogKuzz; 01-04-2015 at 09:39 PM. Reason: OOPPPSS
#44
01-04-2015, 09:47 PM
#45
01-04-2015, 10:01 PM
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Thanks for the repost I hadn't read that before. Seeing other FEA specs is always helpful.
If you are doing FEA on your race car you might like some of the camber/ caster gauges Longacre makes at a fair price. It's on my wish list of tools to own.
Longacre Vial Caster Camber Gauges
I agree 100% on the camber and in the past on cars I have owned I have even preloaded the drivers seat with 200lbs to get camber correct with driver in it. Now on my truck I went with 1/2* camber and I only tow heavy once in a blue moon most of the time it is only 8500lbs / 1000lbs tongue weight so my camber really doesn't change much if at all. But that is something that guys that haul heavy 5th wheels all over the country should keep in mind.
Seeing other FEA specs is always helpful.If you are doing FEA on your race car you might like some of the camber/ caster gauges Longacre makes at a fair price. It's on my wish list of tools to own.
Longacre Vial Caster Camber Gauges
I agree 100% on the camber and in the past on cars I have owned I have even preloaded the drivers seat with 200lbs to get camber correct with driver in it. Now on my truck I went with 1/2* camber and I only tow heavy once in a blue moon most of the time it is only 8500lbs / 1000lbs tongue weight so my camber really doesn't change much if at all. But that is something that guys that haul heavy 5th wheels all over the country should keep in mind.
I actually have a digital setup made by Smart Camber. Also toe plates from Longacre along with the String setup.