Rear Wheel Misaligned? (UPDATE: some rear axles out of spec; warranty replacement)

[3dplane]

TooManyMiles! I hope your username is not true. I was going to say I hope your car is still within the 12/12 adjustment period.
Then you still have a chance to get a different rear axle. If your car is out then mitsu wins in most cases.

Go back and tell them you have a problem with them changing the specs on the alignment machine to make it within specs!
It is out of specs on the right side like most of them. They are going to have to contact mitsubishi to get a new axle.(if you are still within 12 month 12K miles)

It is very easy to change the specs on the alignment machine and that's what happened. The tech saw the read out and went crap it's out and I can't adjust it....let me make it within specs...

There is another way of making it read within specs without changing the specs so if your future readout is magically drastically different from your current measurements and is within specs then I would go to a different place. (So hold on to your printout). A few hundredths of a degree difference is normal from measurement to measurement.

On the other hand that .33 is not that horrible and probably not going to chew up tires. On my car it is .41 on BOTH sides.
So in your case it may not worth the hassle to get a new axle for a slightly accelerated tire wear.
Just my 2 cents.

[TooManyMiles]

TooManyMiles! I hope your username is not true. I was going to say I hope your car is still within the 12/12 adjustment period.

I'm not acquainted with the 12/12 adjustment period so I don't know where I stand -- I'll look into it. The dealer aligned the front wheels for the second time last week. The car had 10,304 miles on it. The first alignment was in May 2014, three weeks after I took delivery of the car (about 22 months ago). The mileage then was 293.

I imagine that jiggling the toe specifications was authorized – or ordered – at a level higher than the tech. Your take on this is more generous than mine. For me, the word fraud comes prominently to mind.

At the least, I should not have had to pay for the alignment. Fact is, I ought to have a new or repaired axle.

Sorry to hear your axle is considerably whacked. The Mirage is my first new car. I bought it because after fifty years of driving, repairing, restoring, and maintaining machines that others had given up on, I wanted to take it easy. Now I'm think about pulling an axle and getting out the o/a torch and muscling metal. Only thinking – unlikely to take this step.

I'm mulling over a couple of other points in your reply, which I very much appreciate.

[deleted user]

Sounds a lot like me ^^^^^^^. I have a tension rod to get the toe down close to 0. My rear tires are wearing at one third the rate of the fronts. At 13k the rears were not down 1 mm, or a little over 1/32nd inch, actually about 1/16th. Fronts were 3/16th when I rotated them to the rear. Maybe later on the heat if Mitsu does nothing.

regards
mech

[cyclopathic]

Sounds a lot like me ^^^^^^^. I have a tension rod to get the toe down close to 0. My rear tires are wearing at one third the rate of the fronts. At 13k the rears were not down 1 mm, or a little over 1/32nd inch, actually about 1/16th. Fronts were 3/16th when I rotated them to the rear. Maybe later on the heat if Mitsu does nothing.

regards
mech

I was wondering for a while if something like old yaris axle with shimmable hubs could fit. There're tons of them on junk yards

[TooManyMiles]

My rear tires are wearing at one third the rate of the fronts. At 13k the rears were not down 1 mm, or a little over 1/32nd inch, actually about 1/16th. Fronts were 3/16th when I rotated them to the rear.

I didn't check tread depth when the tires were rotated, but I have some idea of front and rear wear. Tire rotation was at about 7K miles, and the car is now at 10K. The tires that were in the front but are now in the rear are worn 1/32" more than the tires now in the front. This seems right since I expect fronts to wear more than rears with braking, turning, and powering. (By the way, I'm using a tread depth gauge accurate to about 1/64". I bought it in the 1970s and used it for the first time today. It's hard to resist nice looking tools.)

All four tires are worn evenly side to side (that is, left to right across the contact patch).

old mechanic, it looks like my tires are wearing in a more reasonable way than yours, at least not as extreme. The next time I'm in my dealer's showroom, I'll grab a quick measure of the tread depth of a new tire. Can then figure the absolute wear on my tires.

I mention this because I want to estimate what the crooked rear axle is going to cost me over the long run in new tires and wheel alignments.

[deleted user]

New is 8/32 (I have an extra set with 3k miles), my fronts are wearing 3 times as fast as the rears, both even all across. About 1/32 per 10 k miles.

regards
mech

[BRagland]

Honestly, that's very good wear.

My tires are currently at 7,000 miles and I have 7/32 left in front, and back.

That puts me on track for new tires at 42-50,000 miles. Which to be honest, is very reasonable given that these tires start with 8/32 and not the usual 10/32

I don't think anyone getting 50,000 miles on these tires has much to complain about. That's about as average as it gets across the entire industry.

These tires are doing fine in my opinion, and I have every intention of replacing them with some Altimax tires @ $50 each. They're slightly larger (+1.3%) but they're cheap, better grip, and get about 60,000 miles tread-life.

I'm satisfied.

New is 8/32 (I have an extra set with 3k miles), my fronts are wearing 3 times as fast as the rears, both even all across. About 1/32 per 10 k miles.

regards
mech

[91cavgt]

After I finish moving and can get to my tools again I will check my tread depth out and report back.

[91cavgt]

A coworker of mine bought a Mirage a couple of months after me in 2014. This morning we were talking and I asked how her back tires are doing. She said it is funny that I asked because she was going to get new tires with her income tax because her back tires are bad.

So it looks like there are people out there that have axles out of alignment and don't even know it. She is getting her alignment checked at the local dealership next week.

[Eggman]

I think the negative camber may be quite intentional.

i have no experience with cars with torsion beam or twist beam axles, but they have an interesting interplay of forces acting on them.

That torsion beam effectively provides camber control, toe control and acts as an antisway bar. The angle of the pivot points of the trailing arms have an effect also.

The Mirage pivot points angle forward as you go towards the centerline of the car, and so if they were semi trailing arms with rigid bushings and no torsion beam, then as the wheel rises you would get

1 more positive camber
2 more toe out

In bump the effect of the torsion beam will be to lessen the amount of both of the above

So it might be that the system has been designed for a lower ride height.

If you're able to, it would be interesting if you were able to measure camber and toe with different amounts of weght in the trunk.
I don't believe these syspension systems will be "in spec" at all ride heights, so I'd certainly expect what you measured to change, and might even be "right" at some ride height.

With the torsion beam, and the body leaning as in going round a turn, things seem to get even more interesting.

The camber will increase (more positive) as the body leans because the pivot angle is close to directly across the car.
The cornering force will try and rotate the trailing arm around its longitudinal axis, resisted by the torsion beam which doesn't want to bend.

The cornering force aft of the trailing arm pivot points will try to push in the wheel end of the trailing arm, thus reducing the toe in on the outer wheel, resisted by the torsion beam, which doesn't want to turn into an S-shaped beam (as seen in plan vew).

As the outer wheel rises relative to the body, and the inner wheel drops relative to the body, the torsion beam will be twisted, acting as an anti sway bar.
At the same time the distance between the 2 wheels will increase, resisted by the torsion beam, which doesn't want to stretch. This will reduce the toe in while cornering, and in combination with the increased camber will lead to oversteer.

So it's all rather complicated.

The easiest way for mitsubushi to make these axles come within spec is of course to change the spec.

3dplane, I think your best possible mod is to do what Opel apparently have done of the new Opel Astra, and add a Watts linkage for lateral location.

See http://www.richardaucock.com/vauxhal...nsion-a-twist/

I'm glad I found this post. I read it some time ago and thought it gave a good description of how this works. Thanks for writing this.