I'm after some ideas on some tyre wear which would appear to be being caused by incorrect alignment.
The car in question is a UK spec August 2000 TDi 115 estate, with "sport" (1BE) suspension. The car is stock in all aspects and has done
120000 miles.Recently one of the front spring broke - snapped in two - and thus both front springs were replaced. VW say there's no known problems in this area although the recovery truck driver said otherwise, as did a couple of independent VW specialists I spoke to. Any, this is a distraction to the current problem.
Three weeks after this the car went in for a service and the front tyres have worn the inside edges off, to the point where the wires were showing on both tyres. This was blamed on the tracking. The replacement tyres were noticably warm on the inside after just a 5 mile drive home from the tyre shop.
The alignment was subsequently checked on a 4 wheel alignment machine which reported that the toe angles are correct (+18 minutes, spec
16-24) but that the camber angles are excessive (1deg 13 minutes and 1deg 16 minutes). Caster angles are identical at 4deg 30 minutes (spec is 4deg 53 max).I know that the camber isn't adjustable as stock, so what could be causing this problem? The car has never had any major accidents, and there are no obviously damaged components - which would be unlikely anyway since both camber angles are almost identical.
At the moment I'm assuming that it will either be bushes or ball joints - what is most likely? The bushes (and ball joints) don't make any noise and there's no obvious signs of play in the ball joints.
Which bushes are most likely to be the culprits? Or have I overlooked something?
Could tyre pressure cause this? The car has 16inch VW alloys, what pressure should they be run at? I'm not sure if the 15inch alloys which are normally fitted have different specs (2.2bar front, 2.0 rear) or not. The tyre manufacturers don't put pressures onto the tyres over here.
Can anyone help a new Passat owner in a week where the car has swallow it's insurance, a 40000 mile service, a cam belt replacement and two new tyres already?!!!
Andy Juniper backwards email is com.freeuk@ajuniper