Adjusting Toe

[mnrivera210]

So I just came back from mounting and aligning my new set of tires and came to a major problem. The shop couldn't adjust the toe all the way to make it close to zero. They said the the bolt to adjust it was maxed out and they couldn't place the tire more outward, looking at it the tire is facing a little inwards towards the front.

I have Skunk2 Pro S set to the lowest in the rear And the SPC camber kit set to -1.0 in the rear and -1.5 upfront.

Thank you.

[BigT]

Did you have a noticeable alignment issue (tires pointing inward) before the new tires? Where did you take it? When you drive straight down the road is the steering wheel centered, or is it turned slightly in one direction or another?

[mnrivera210]

Well my last alingment the guy had the same issue, the toe was at like -.6 and my reay tires were bold in a couple thousand miles and I don't drive hard at all. If I look at the rears tires from the back of the car they slightly face inward toward the front sort of like this \. Guy said he adjusted the bolt to the max it can go but the toe is still bad.

[mnrivera210]

bump! no one has an idea? is there really only one bolt that controls the angle of toe?

[civic tech]

dude this is really strange. the only time i had that problem with an alignment was when i put a new rack on a car and put the steering knuckle on a tooth off. dont know how that could happen with your car.

[drahgon]

i think the responders are talking about the front tires while the op is talking about the rear tires if i understand correctly. As far as adjusting REAR toe, it is only the one bolt to adjust afaik. However I have no solution for you, I'm only lowered on springs and had no problems getting the toe back into spec after lowering.

[SWRT]

How low are you? I don't imagine Skunk would design a setting that puts you outside the toe adjust range... but who knows.

Reason I ask, I had this problem on a race car. If you go too low you end up not being able to dial out all the toe. I had to change the toe adjust slot in the lower arm, it was not easy. Lots of machining and welding. Eventually we designed our own lower arms.

From memory, if you add -ve camber to the rear, you end up with more toe in... since you're already pretty light on the rear camber (-1.0deg) I don't think you should remove any more. Our race car was running -5.0~7.5deg rear camber... so I had no choice but to do something drastic. Maybe try this: loosen the front 'dog bone' on the trailing arm and shift it as far outboard as possible. You can also loosen the front lower bushing on the knuckle and push it max outboard as well. There isn't a lot of clearance in these joints, but there may be enough if you're close.

If thats not enough... you'll need to start raising the ride height.


-SWRT

[mnrivera210]

well, on the rear I placed the coilovers to the lowest mark, which doesn't even look as low as I've seen some people have on their car. Here are some pics I took with my phone.







As you can see the tires are like / \. The toe is so off you can see it in the pic.

[killsw1tch]

Front toe should be 0mm (+2mm or -2mm depending on preference) and the rear should be toed in 2mm. (+2mm or -1mm). It should never be 0 in the rear.

Your tires will wear the inside edges out quickly if you have more than .75 degree camber in the rear. That's the price you pay for better handling or better looks (having it lowered).

[killsw1tch]

If you had 0mm toe in the rear then at highway speed the friction from the road will pull your tires rearward resulting in negative toe. This can cause wandering and undesirable steering effects.

On the front wheels you have the engine driving them forward so this results in more positive toe at highway speeds, the torque from the engine pulls them forward. That's why you want 0mm toe on the front.

[Chubs]

if they pull the other tire in more, they can even it up and adjust your steering wheel.

shops nowadays = ftl.

Edit: i thought u were referring to the front. sry.

[Mikey6p]

The rear toe bolt maxes out pretty quick when you have it pretty low. When I got an alignment with neuspeed race springs, the bolt maxed out before the toe came into spec. You have adjustable coils, raise it a bit....you don't want too much toe, it eats your tires quicker than any other alignment malady.

[aks0605]

you have to replace the bolt with a bigger one i use to do alignments for kauffman tire and this is what i had to do on mine i dont know where to get them though we had a couple laying around the shop that fit

[mnrivera210]

Thanks for all the reply's... They should make a kit to fix this issue. I'm relieved to see others have this problem as well. My toe is over .6 or so off, so my tires will be eaten up pretty quick. I'm just wondering if anyone else know how to truly fix this and what their shop did, hopefully they didn't BS them.

I wish you knew what bolt you used to replace the stock one aks0605, lol.

[SWRT]

Originally Posted by killsw1tch

If you had 0mm toe in the rear then at highway speed the friction from the road will pull your tires rearward resulting in negative toe. This can cause wandering and undesirable steering effects.

On the front wheels you have the engine driving them forward so this results in more positive toe at highway speeds, the torque from the engine pulls them forward. That's why you want 0mm toe on the front.

What friction dude? Zero toe = minimal rolling resistance.

The rates on those bushing are a heck of a lot higher than anything that would deflect significantly with a force as low as rolling resistance.

Dynamic toe change is designed to react to the aligning torque of the tire (side loads), these forces are significantly higher than tangential forces like rolling resistance. On top of that, the scrub radius of the front sus. is not high enough to make a force like engine torque or even braking torque have a measureable impact to dynamic toe.

The reason Honda spec's toe in on the rear is for stability. It would be zero like the front if it could be since zero toe gives the best mileage. The rear toe adjust bolt should be able to achieve -ve toe. At stock height it is centered on 0.04-IN.

-SWRT

[mnrivera210]

^ Very informative... another thing, when I went to the shop they were arguing with me not to put ANY camber on my tires. They thought I was retarded for puting -1.5 in the front, they said to do -.5 max. I had to literally force them to just do it!