Technical uneven tyre wear

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Technical uneven tyre wear

jayartibee

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'07 Panda Active is wearing rear tyres out on outside shoulders. Anyone know how to adjust rear tracking?
 
post photos

how many miles has the tyres done. Outside wear is normal to a certain extent.

most wear at the rear is due to worn out front suspension or damage rear beam. 99% due to being jack in the centre of the beam by a tyre depot

no official adjustment in the suspension except front toe
 
You're not the only one! Mine was rapidly shredding the left rear outside shoulder.

As koalar says, there's no provision for adjusting toe or camber on the rear wheels.

I added shim washers between the hub flange and mounting plates to adjust toe.

Obviously a highly unofficial bit of tinkering that I'd hesitate to advise trying, but it has cured my tyre wear. I know someone else used gasket material. More details here: https://www.fiatforum.com/threads/psychopanda-quest-ce-que-cest.475528/#post-4524987

It's important to establish what type of wear pattern you're seeing to establish where/if you need to make adjustments.

Maybe get the tracking checked - they won't be able to adjust anything, but it'll give you an idea of what's going on.

It's not impossible the beam has been damaged, but there are suspicions the rear beam wasn't the most accurately manufactured or installed bit of kit.
 
Could be a number of things and, as mentioned above, manufacturing tolerances do seem to have been pretty lax. However as you are reporting both wearing on the outside shoulders I'm with Koalar, it's quite likely the car has been jacked up on the middle of the rear beam and bent slightly. This will make both rear wheels lean out slightly at the top and so cause the outside shoulders to wear. Again, as previously mentioned there is no "official" way to make adjustments to the rear suspension and if the beam is bent the only effective cure will be a new beam - not that bad if you buy a pattern made part and can do the work yourself: https://www.imaxle.co.uk/ It all gets a bit "silly" if you're going to get a garage to do it though.

Have a careful look at the middle of the rear axle and see if there's any evidence of a jack having been used there - it may not be all that obvious, just by looking at it, that it's actually bent (it doesn't need to be bent by much) If you want a definitive diagnosis then a 4 wheel alignment check is the way to go. This is a specialist piece of equipment - not just a simple front wheel alignment tool for checking toe in/out - some tyre fitting specialists may have them and they are often found in larger accident repair workshops. It's likely that the garages in your area will know who has one locally.
 
the outer edge is where it normally wears First if the car is running perfectly to specifications. Normally slightly worse on the nearside if living somewhere with a lot of roundabouts

theres a difference between shredding a tyre in a couple of thousand miles and a tyre thats worn on the outside after 20 thousand miles

should be a date code on the tyres
 
It is a design/build defect in the alignment of the rear axle. I used gasket material to sort the nearside rear wheel/hub out as the tyre was wearing on the edge. That was a long time ago (maybe 20,000 miles) , wear is even across the tread now so problem resolved.
 
My tracking and camber checked out fine but the car always pulled Left and scrubbed the front tyres.

The rear axle uses bolted on wheel spindles using 4 bolts (studs actually) each side. Some slotted shims made from coke can aluminium allowed me to tweak the rear toe (back edge on one side, front edge on other side). The pull has stopped and tyre wear improved.

It's a small change and easily reversible.
 
How is your tirepressure?

gr J
I was wondering when someone would get round to this

Along with how aggressive you drive the car

Diagnosis

Then correct

Is better than listing everything possible

I was waiting until the original poster got back. If the tyres are old we might be trying to fix something that isn’t faulty in the first place
 
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I think It's more of an alignment issue rather than tyre pressures as the later would result in more or less uniform wear across the tyre eg to low - inner and outer wear to high - centre wear.
That's just my opinion though. :)
 
15K of hard driving around bends and the rear tyres should look like this

This is why we need photos, driving style, age and mileage

otherwise we will just go round in circles like the tyres themselves
 

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My tracking and camber checked out fine but the car always pulled Left and scrubbed the front tyres.

The rear axle uses bolted on wheel spindles using 4 bolts (studs actually) each side. Some slotted shims made from coke can aluminium allowed me to tweak the rear toe (back edge on one side, front edge on other side). The pull has stopped and tyre wear improved.

It's a small change and easily reversible.
Seriously, Its a Panda not a Porsche

Porsche rear alignment can also affect the front tyre wear (rear weight and pushing)
Panda front alignment can also affect the rear tyre wear (front weight pulling)

Wheel alignment fine, no wear in the suspension but pulling to one side

Either the garage that did the alignment check is rubbish or the electronic steering needs realignment. Even with fault suspension you can make the car pull to the left or right at will via software as there is very little self centring built into the geometry and its mainly done via the electronics


from elearn

The return stage refers to the realignment function normally produced by the geometry of the front section of the vehicle when the steering is released after a steering manoeuvre.
 
I pulled the power steering fuse. It made zero difference to the steering pull at motorway speeds. I also had the tracking carefully centered (steering wheel sits straight when driving straight). The pull to left problem went away after carefully shimming the back axle.

HOWEVER I have not checked if MES can correct any electronic steering alignment issues. Thank you for the heads up.
 
I pulled the power steering fuse. It made zero difference to the steering pull at motorway speeds. I also had the tracking carefully centered (steering wheel sits straight when driving straight). The pull to left problem went away after carefully shimming the back axle.

HOWEVER I have not checked if MES can correct any electronic steering alignment issues. Thank you for the heads up.
as expected. there is very little geometry to keep the car in a straight line.

with perfect geometry and no power steering the car should pull slightly to the left

although I would not be concerned if it tracked true or right without EPS

yes it can be changed in MES, Delphi and WOW.

If you want to track true against the camber you would have to realign with the steering pointing slightly to the right.

going with the camber and drifting into the rumble strips is the safest option.
 
Road camber will always affect how straight any car steers. However I could drive mine on the (literally) wrong side of the road and it still pulled left. It clearly had to be sorted out. I will have to get MES on the steering as I have the connecting cables. Just need to get the old steam powered Windows fired up.
 
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