Wheel Alignment on lowered Avant in Glasgow

[scottyjohn]

Hi all,
Had my A4 SE avant lowered by 40mm some time ago and have realised my tyres are now wearing unevenly.
Trouble is that Ive been to 3 tyre places which I have used in the past and they say they cant do it as its too low?

Has anyone had experience of a good place in Glasgow area which can handle the lowered car for alignment?

 

[sworks16]

a word of warning when you do find somewhere, ask them if they can compensate for the lowering.

I had mine tracked and the inners are still wearing, I think it's where they set them to the factory settings and as the car is lower the wheels are still ruining my tires

 

[aragorn]

CLCM in sighthill, edinburgh are pretty good at this type of thing, also car craft in loanhead, mid lothian

The tyres wear on the insides due to either excessive negative camber or incorrect toe settings. Camber is not adjustable on the B6 platform as far as i know, but on the same token the design of the suspension is such that lowering the car shouldnt overly affect the camber. Toe might change and thats usually what gets adjusted when you get the car "aligned"

One thing i would keep an eye on is wear in the control arms. If the balljoints on the top two arms wear, it can allow the toe to change randomly as you drive along. I had fitted some VERY cheap arms to our car and got it all aligned and within 4k miles the front tyres were destroyed on the insides. My first thaught was to start shouting at the garage that tracked it, but on jacking the car up i noticed there was so much play in the 4k old arms balljoints that i could move the wheel thru an arc of about 2-3mm meaning the toe would have been wandering around while driving. Now clearly proper audi or good aftermarket arms wont fail that quickly, but if your arms are worn they could be causing the tyre wear.

 

[bubstar]

Some good advice from Aragorn there. I've just fitted new tyres and given my car a full 4x4 geometry.

The only settings that were out was rear left tow and front L&R tow. I checked the car before I fitted the coilovers and it's interesting to note the LR tow was out!!

As said a 40mm drop will not affect the suspension enough to start wearing tyres out. If you need to adjust camber then you've probably got some damage.

I guess my car is about 45mm from an SE now and my tyres were wearing very evenly.

 

[s1hal]

I believe CLCM do a lot of work for the surrounding garages including the Aston Martin one. As far a recommendations go, you don't get much better than that eh?

 

[sworks16]

i think the drop on the rear or my car is aboout 60mm and the a4 does have adjustable rear camber

 

[aragorn]

rear might be adjustable in terms of camber, ive never looked at the rear too closely, but assuming the front is the same as the B5, which afaik it is, the front camber isnt adjustable other than moving the subframe from side to side to even the camber out.

Our car currently has -1.2Deg camber on one side and -0.6deg on the other at the front, nothings actually bent, its just that the subframe isnt aligned 100% perfectly within the chassis. Ideally the subframe would be loosened and moved over slightly to give -0.9deg on both sides, however the garage didnt have time to start loosening the subframe bolts and levering things about to fix it at the time, so it was just left like that, and neither tyre is showing any major signs of camber wear.