*I* did! No joke!!
I discovered the other day that my 40,000 mile tires I bought 6,000 miles ago are shot in the front! Right down to the steel belting on the inside edge. What?! So I carefully looked at the tires from the front, as I had the wheels pointing straight.
Get THIS. One tire was sticking out to the side by 2 inches!...while the other was straight! No WONDER the quick wear to the tire. I had severe "toe-out". Toe-in/toe-out is the terminology that when your tires are not straight as viewed from front to back. In other words, they are not parallel on a horizontal plane, when viewed head-on. (The terminology for the amount a tire leans in or out on a vertical plane is called "camber". And my camber, visually appeared good enough to the naked eye.)
I confirmed this ("toe-out") by...instead of going to the alignment shop where they hook up lazer beams to your wheels...*I* straddled the tires with a 4 foot level, using the rectangular box of my car to act as the reference. I had a neighbor help hold a tape measure to confirm that at both the front and rear of my car...my rocker panels are 61 inches apart... meaning my car is a perfect rectangle in the area I was using as a reference point.
I jacked up the car with my floor jack and removed the wheel/tire. Then I undid my one tie-rod end (How did I know WHICH wheel to adjust? I first made sure the steering wheel was in the right position, and this allowed me to find out which wheel was the largest culprit.) and backed it out maybe 1/4 inch or more and slipped the tie-rod end back into the steering knuckle. I then held the level across my lug bolts on my front disc break. After 2 more slight adjustments of the adjusting threads on the tie-rod end, I called it quits. I achieved parallel as confirmed by my level.
I greased up the tie-rod end and lower ball joint while at it. I put the wheel back on. Lowered the car off the jack. Reconfirmed the parallel of the wheels = still good. Then I took it out for a test drive. Great! Now my car tracks straight and no longer pulls me toward oncoming traffic!
Know what took me the longest about this job? Finding my set of open end-box wrenches! Then the second longest thing was trying to beat the tie-rod end out of the steering knuckle. My Haynes manual said I needed a puller to do it. Ha. I beat it out with my 3 pound sledge, after backing out the nut to the end of the bolt and beating on the nut! After that, it was a piece of cake. All you have to do is remove the nut that holds the tie-rod end to the steering knuckle, plus the cotter pin. Then lift (or pound out, or puller out) the tie-rod end from the steering knuckle. Then rotate the tie-rod end, which increases of decreases it's length, depending on if you screw it in or out (I had to back mine out, in this case)...and that is all there is to it.
Now all I have to do is get a new tire or two. The tire place will not compensate me for premature wear on a car misaligned by 2 inches (at least!).
How did it get this way? Probably from hitting curbs and hitting 1 fo0t deep potholes! I hit one so hard a few months back that my hub cap went flying for 100 yards.
I discovered the other day that my 40,000 mile tires I bought 6,000 miles ago are shot in the front! Right down to the steel belting on the inside edge. What?! So I carefully looked at the tires from the front, as I had the wheels pointing straight.
Get THIS. One tire was sticking out to the side by 2 inches!...while the other was straight! No WONDER the quick wear to the tire. I had severe "toe-out". Toe-in/toe-out is the terminology that when your tires are not straight as viewed from front to back. In other words, they are not parallel on a horizontal plane, when viewed head-on. (The terminology for the amount a tire leans in or out on a vertical plane is called "camber". And my camber, visually appeared good enough to the naked eye.)
I confirmed this ("toe-out") by...instead of going to the alignment shop where they hook up lazer beams to your wheels...*I* straddled the tires with a 4 foot level, using the rectangular box of my car to act as the reference. I had a neighbor help hold a tape measure to confirm that at both the front and rear of my car...my rocker panels are 61 inches apart... meaning my car is a perfect rectangle in the area I was using as a reference point.
I jacked up the car with my floor jack and removed the wheel/tire. Then I undid my one tie-rod end (How did I know WHICH wheel to adjust? I first made sure the steering wheel was in the right position, and this allowed me to find out which wheel was the largest culprit.) and backed it out maybe 1/4 inch or more and slipped the tie-rod end back into the steering knuckle. I then held the level across my lug bolts on my front disc break. After 2 more slight adjustments of the adjusting threads on the tie-rod end, I called it quits. I achieved parallel as confirmed by my level.
I greased up the tie-rod end and lower ball joint while at it. I put the wheel back on. Lowered the car off the jack. Reconfirmed the parallel of the wheels = still good. Then I took it out for a test drive. Great! Now my car tracks straight and no longer pulls me toward oncoming traffic!
Know what took me the longest about this job? Finding my set of open end-box wrenches! Then the second longest thing was trying to beat the tie-rod end out of the steering knuckle. My Haynes manual said I needed a puller to do it. Ha. I beat it out with my 3 pound sledge, after backing out the nut to the end of the bolt and beating on the nut! After that, it was a piece of cake. All you have to do is remove the nut that holds the tie-rod end to the steering knuckle, plus the cotter pin. Then lift (or pound out, or puller out) the tie-rod end from the steering knuckle. Then rotate the tie-rod end, which increases of decreases it's length, depending on if you screw it in or out (I had to back mine out, in this case)...and that is all there is to it.
Now all I have to do is get a new tire or two. The tire place will not compensate me for premature wear on a car misaligned by 2 inches (at least!).
How did it get this way? Probably from hitting curbs and hitting 1 fo0t deep potholes! I hit one so hard a few months back that my hub cap went flying for 100 yards.
