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I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to wheel alignments and I was wondering what you guys' take is on this recent alignment I had done by the local Firestone. Is it okay, good, or could be better. I am a little confused on their limits too. The Nissan service manual has different specs than what is listed on the Firestone alignment p/w. See attahments. Also, if it isn't too much to ask, could one of you fellas educate me a little more on what I'm looking at. As always, thank you in advance for the help.
 

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I just had my truck in for an alignment recently and was educated a bit by the shop owner. My knowledge is fairly limited but I can try to give some input.

Your alignment consists of 3 parameters: Camber, Caster and Toe.

Camber is, basically, how flat the bottom of your tire is on the road. Camber will contribute the most to uneven tire wear. If these lines --> | | are your tires, looking at your vehicle from the front, that is good camber because they are straight up and down. "Bad" ("bad" because some people actually aim for this) camber would look something like \ / or / \. I hope that makes sense.

Toe is fairly easy to explain. Look down at your feet, pretend they're your front tires, and angle your toes in, almost as if you're "pigeon toed." That is called "toe in." "Toe out" is the opposite.

As far as caster, I have a fairly hard time explaining it...however I was told that it doesn't contribute nearly as much to tire wear as camber and toe.

I've used this site a few times to help myself visualize the different parameters. I felt it did a fairly good job.

For reference, I'll attach my printout from the alignment I had a few weeks back. My toe was WAY out, particularly on the left side, but honestly that was really the only thing wrong with my alignment. I had just installed new UCAs so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

To make a long story short, as long as your camber and toe are in specs, and your caster is relatively close, you'll be good.

As far as the values on your printout itself, I don't see anything that would be cause for alarm. When you add lift/wheels/tires/etc it will inevitably change the geometry of your vehicle, so all you can do is get it as close as possible to factory/recommended specs, but everything looks good to me.

Hopefully someone with more experience will chime in and correct me if I missed something, or add some information.
 

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Discussion Starter · #3 ·
Thanks for the info, HOPS...much appreciated.
 

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Hops nailed it.

The printout shows only 0.06 degrees decrease in toe. The steering wheel may have been off-center or the technician jounced the vehicle. Other than that, nothing else was touched.

You need not worry about the +3.0 caster on the right front wheel. So long you have at least a -0.50 cross-caster to counter road-crown.
 

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Discussion Starter · #5 ·
Hops nailed it.

The printout shows only 0.06 degrees decrease in toe. The steering wheel may have been off-center or the technician jounced the vehicle. Other than that, nothing else was touched.

You need not worry about the +3.0 caster on the right front wheel. So long you have at least a -0.50 cross-caster to counter road-crown.
Thank you...
 
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