Quote:
Originally Posted by TEujunga
OK, I'll bite -- how could having zero toe possibly increase tire wear?
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On a level and flat road going straight with perfectly balanced tires, zero toe would probably be ideal.
On crowned roads with corners zero toe will result in amplifying every suspension joint's small amount of play or backlash because it's unstable and rather than having a stability from loading all the joints in one direction on each side, it would cause the system of joints that locate the wheel to wander on almost any imperfection. Assuming the front is not a driven axle most of the time. It would also cause drag on the inside tire in cornering because the slip angle would be greater if the ackerman angles are designed for toe in. So it may have more wear in normal driving due to the slip angle on cornering.
I suspect one major issue that the front suspension has in the 5th gen is that some models are awd and some are rwd. For a driven front axle you typically want tow out. For a rwd you want to in. How do you design a system that does both? You don't. You have one that does nether as well as it should. And the result is what I think is the primary cause of so many people having front end shimmy issues. The toe is set near zero. And that's not a great design IMO. The awd should have different alignment than the other models, and different spindles with different steering arms, and probably even different control arm mounts.