Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:52:58 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: Front tire wear
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re
Wheel alignment is a dark and mysterious subject to me.
start with just the 'straight ahead' understanding . That's not hard, right
? .......
the wheels need to be nearly upright, and parrellel to each other, and to
the long axis of the vehcile........
ie. pointing where they are going.
nothing to complicated there, *yet* ......right ?
it's only when the vehicle turns and leans that things get interesting.
Those relationsips are all determiend by the design and layout of the
suspension........and we get to fine tune ( alignment ) on the basics
settings built in.
end of post.......
the rest is 'extra.'
_____________________________________________________________________________
I love this ..........don't know if anyone will appreciate this , but ..
there was a cover shot on Road & Track magazine, of some hot japanese car
........some rear wheel drive mazda or .....no, it was one of those
Mitsubishi eclipse cars.......in any case, rear wheel drive, front engine,
2WD.
the car is showing cornering with considerable lean to the outside.
Normally, if you are in a left turn, the car will be learning to the right.
and that's a 'normal picture' ...........turning left, car leans right,
front wheels are turned left.
but in this shot ..........high speed performance turn to the left, car is
leaning right .......BUT ...........the front wheels are turned to the
right.
They have the tail hung out, so they are countersteering to keep it pointed
in the right direction - so that's cornering left, but holding in right
steering correction to stay on line.
Which is an odd 'picuture' cornereing left, leaning right, but front
wheels also turned right. We dont' normally see that too often.
When we do counter steer to stay on the line, like on ice say
.........we're not generating any real cornering force, so the car doesn't
lean much .
So to get this shot, they'd have to be cornering pretty hard to get the car
to lean noticeably towards the outside of the turn while also
countersteering to stay on the line. Something you don't see too often.
That cover shot was over 10 years ago, when cars still leaned outward in
turns nicely .......more modern preformance cars don't lean outward
cornereing quite that much.
In the beginning of car manufacturing, it took a long time to come up with
independent front suspension that worked well. The upper and lower A-arm
front suspension on vanagons .....is a great suspension type. Nothin' wrong
with it at all. It's identical in concept and execution to the front and
rear suspensions on my 450 SLC mercedes ..........( with the exception that
that car also has a rear anti-sway bar - otherwise it is the saeme
upper and lower a-arms in the front, with coil springs and anti-sway bar.
in the rear, same thing - traiing arms and coil springs.
that the vanagon has rack and pinion steering is quite a good thing too, not
readily recognized perhaps, by vanagon owners. Compared to what the previous
desing had.....which is all Bay and Split Window buses going back to the
beginning of time, with their steering boxes and Swing Link in the
front.....
vanagon's rack and pinion steering is a massive step forward.
and ......taken care of, vanagon rack and pinion steering hardly wears -
very nice. VW did a super fine job on vanagon suspension and steering I
think.
scott
www.turbovans.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rocket J Squirrel" <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:55 AM
Subject: Re: Front tire wear
> Now if you'd said that it was the outer edges of both front tires wearing
> out then I could-a shared that I had the same problem, too, which turned
> out to be excessive toe-in, which was scrubbing the rubber off the tires
> at an alarming rate. But with inside and outside edges being scrubbed,
> well, there's someone here that knows that that might be.
>
> Wheel alignment is a dark and mysterious subject to me.
>
> --
> Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
> 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
> 74 Westrailia: (Ladybug Trailer company, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.)
> Bend, OR
> KG6RCR
>
>
>
> On 9/24/2009 4:50 AM William Greenamyer wrote:
>
>> Both front tires are worn on both edges of each tire. It is almost like
>> the
>> tires had been run greatly under inflated (tends to wear the edges of the
>> tire) but I always keep good pressure in all of the tires.
>>
>> William
>>