ok i was cleaning the garage today and noticed my tire isnt a 90 degree angle to the floor..its at a little slant and i thought maybe some bolts came loose so i jacked up the car and tried taking the tire out and putting it back...and no luck...

does this mean i need an allignment or is my axle bent or something?!?!

and if i get an allignment with my low profile tires will the allignment be good for my winter tires which are stock tire size..

any help would be good..thanks

jay

 

Which wheel? If it's a rear wheel, one of the wheels may be either on a little bump or down in a low spot. Might want to check the other side and see if it's off by about the same (but in the other direction). It is true that rear wheels on an unmodified axle can have a slight camber - up to maybe 0.5° and usually negative at that (tilted in at the top). Might even have a little toe, too.

Actually, it isn't all that hard to measure the angles. Several DIY methods will work. Then you'd have some numbers to talk with.

Probably your alignment would remain acceptable, assuming that there aren't any huge differences in tire and wheel size and wheel offset.

Norm

 

its the front.

 

Did you lower it? Hit a pothole or curb?
Alignment will be fine when swapping rims.

 

If the car had been jacked up in the garage before the odd camber was noticed there may be nothing at all wrong. When you raise and then lower the car, the tires will need to scrub sideways in order to be in an unloaded condition (laterally). This forces the camber to appear off, but when you roll the car a few feet it goes away.

Move the car to a place that's as level as possible and check how far away from vertical both front tires are. If they "fix" themselves, you're probably done. Otherwise, you can measure camberusing a carpenter's square if it has a little bubble level in it, and you'll want a small scale to measure how much gap there is at the end of the scale when there iszero bubble in its level. Negative camber is a gap at the top. You should perhaps check how level the ground is with the same level so that the calculations can be corrected for better results. Use the wheel flange but not the lip (or the tire) to set the square up against. If you post the numbers I'll help you go through the math (it's pretty simple).


Norm

 

Good call, I didnt even think of that, very true.