<VV> Rear wheel wear

[Bruce Schug]

On Aug 7, 2004, at 8:14 PM, Roger Gault wrote:

> Tom,
> Your camber is probably off.  Usually, caused by worn bushings in the 
> lower
> control rods.
> Been there - life is better with new bushings.
>
> Roger Gault
>
Roger's right. You probably have too much negative camber (the tires 
tilt in at the top). Have you rebuilt your suspension and/or had a good 
alignment lately? If your suspension is up to snuff you probably just 
need a good alignment. If the problem is the suspension itself, new 
strut rod bushings might be all you need. But it may be time for a good 
suspension rebuild. If it's never been done you might want to just go 
ahead and do it.

Get your rear wheel bearings checked. They probably just need to be 
cleaned and repacked with grease (this is quite a job to take them 
apart, you need to know what you're doing and have a press to do it. 
You might be better off to take the hubs with bearings to a shop that 
can do this for you). Get a set of rebuilt strut rods like the ones Lon 
Wall sells. Clarks and others may have them too. Or, you can just put 
replacement bushings in yourself. DON'T use hard nylon bushings! 
Urethane ones are great, but not the solid plastic ones.

Replace the bushings at the front of the rear torque arm too and the 
little bushings on the little stabilizing rod. Check your shocks while 
you're at it and your coil springs too. Coils do sag and need 
replacement. While you're under there, how 'bout your U-joints? Have 
they ever been replaced? It's not a bad job to remove both drive shafts 
and press in four new universal joints. Is that about it? This is 
called doing it once and doing it right. Oh and check your heater hoses 
and the rubber fuel line that connects the two metal lines too. And be 
sure your starter is good. Now's a good time to get it rebuilt too.

Now, you can go to a good alignment shop and get a good alignment. For 
general street driving use factory alignment specs with maybe zero 
degrees camber. We performance guys run a degree of negative camber or 
so on the rear for driving, but you have to be careful or you will 
still eat rear tires.

Bruce

Bruce W. Schug
CORSA South Carolina
Greenville, SC
bwschug@charter.net

CORSA member since 1981

'67 Monza. "67AC140"