No problem Wha Who. It’s actually very much affected by both the camber and the caster. Unfortunately, it’s also a function of the locations of mounting locations of suspension components and physical characteristics of the components themselves. It cannot be adjusted for except as a byproduct of other settings, and when they’re in spec it too should be in spec. If it cannot be resolved, damage is the usual culprit.
I also wanted to reply to OK445s comment that camber can be tweaked to compensate for road crown. That’s true, but it does not follow therefore that adjustments for road crown should be causing a pull to the right in normal driving. Clearly the dealer was using it as an excuse. The alignment readings when it was actually checked confirm that IMHO. The readings were bad.
Honestly, I think the dealer might know more than he’s telling, but there’s absolutely no way we or the OP would ever be able to find that out. Either the truck was delivered with a problem or something happened unloading it or perhaps during a test drive. I guess I’m just of a suspicious nature in situations like this. While studies by automotive consumer watchdogs have shown that it’s common for cars to be delivered with alignment out of spec, they’re usually not far out and brought back to normal with a simple alignment. This truck seems abnormal to me.
Thanks for the spin out information. They originally told me they would need to replace all 4 tires and I told them the rear tires where in almost like new condition with lots of tread and they said they would look at them when I brought the truck in. They said the rear tires were in excellent shape. Maybe that’s why they thought the older tires were ok on the rear? I’ll ask when I take the truck back in.
It looks like what the general consciences is, that the alignment from the manufacturer was messed up from day 1, the current alignment is ok. Radial Pull is not a safety issue if swapping the front tires removes it.
That about cover everything? Did I miss something?
We could forever go own debating Radial Pull, as well as debating the truck itself and the effects of the different alignment parameters on handling and feel, as well as what’s right and what’s not in alignment, but the bottom line is that if you’re happy with the current feel of the vehicle than you’ve won the game. None of these things are safety issues, just technical debates.
You’ve done the work necessary to ensure that you have a safe and good vehicle. You have absolutely nothing to be concerned about.
Happy motoring.
Sincerely,
TSM
Ummm…Radial pull will exist on the tire , I can’t believe I have to say this, even when you rotate them to the back. So, yes, rotating them may eliminate the pull in the front tires if the rear ones were good, but when you rotate them again you will have the same problem.
Rotating the tires is a great fix for the tire shop, because they can say that they fixed the problem. But the bad tires still have the conicity in them from and improperly positioned belt in the tire. Rotating the tires does not replace the tires. And yes, conicity is a manufacturing defect, and legally needs to be replaced by the company that manufactured them, and hopefully also the company that installed them.
Tire companies and shops do not check tires for improperly laid belts, maybe one out of 100 goes in a machine. I have had 3 separate instances of bad tires that did this and its ridiculous that the shops and manufacturers do not put each tire made through a machine to pull out the many bad ones ahead of time. Even when replaced under warranty, the customer still bears most of the cost of lost time, the risk of loss of control, and other factors that the tire companies conciously put on their customers.
First, I have no idea why I didn’t post on this thread back in 2014 when it was active.
Second, allow me to explain how conicity works:
EVERY tire has conicity. The question is how much and what direction it is pointing and for the sake of simplicity we’ll assign one direction as the positive direction, and the other way is negative. (At the moment I can’t remember if pointing out is positive or negative, but there is an industry commonality.)
What causes a pull is the vector DIFFERENCE of the 2 front tires. Ergo 2 large positives = no problem. 2 large negatives = no problem. A small negative and a large positive = small pull. Large negative and a large positive = BIG pull
Many tire manufacturers have machines at the end of the assembly line that measure - among other things - conicity for ALL tires. (Some don’t and I’ll explain later what they do.)
Some tire manufacturers use an upper limit for conicity, but others segregate their tires into piles with different conicity levels and ship only from that pile to a given source, thereby minimizing the chances of there being large differences in direction.
What about those tire manufactures that don’t 100% measure for conicity: They sample to see where the production process is. The parameter is called standard deviation and it is measured in terms of sigmas - that is 1 standard deviation is 1 sigma. If they get a sampling where the sigma levels are too high, one fix would be to 100% screen that particular batch.
And sadly, some tire manufacturers don’t even sample, but it doesn’t take very long for tire dealers to note which tire manufacturers those are and they tend to avoid them because of the hassle.
So it isn’t that large values of conicity are bad, it’s only bad if the other tire is in the other direction.
And I forgot to mention that some vehicles are much more sensitive than others to differences in conicity (actually the vector sum.)
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If you have that situation, and tire companies won’t help, would dismounting one of the tires and putting it back on in the reverse orientation do the trick? The tires would look different from the side of the car, but if they track straight, seems like that might be a good work-a-round.
I install my tires, purchase new ones and put them on the rims. Definitely notice a difference tire to tire, not this parameter, don’t know how to assess, but how evenly the tire is weighted around the rim, and how out of round it is, quite a noticeable difference tire to tire. Usually I can get a pretty good result balance-wise by carefuly aligning the lightest part of the tire with the heaviest part of the rim.
[quote=“George_San_Jose1, post:26, topic:85138”] If you have that situation, and tire companies won’t help, would dismounting one of the tires and putting it back on in the reverse orientation do the trick? The tires would look different from the side of the car, but if they track straight, seems like that might be a good work-a-round.
I install my tires, purchase new ones and put them on the rims. Definitely notice a difference tire to tire, not this parameter, don’t know how to assess, but how evenly the tire is weighted around the rim, and how out of round it is, quite a noticeable difference tire to tire. Usually I can get a pretty good result balance-wise by carefully aligning the lightest part of the tire with the heaviest part of the rim. .[/quote]
Interestingly, there’s a vehicle manufacturer who used the strategy of reversing the tire on the wheel They would require BOTH sides on the tire to be the same (except for the date code) and would require the R1H mark to be on the side that resulted in all tires have the same conicity direction (I forget if it was positive or negative).
So yes, reversing the tire on the rim MIGHT work.
Tire uniformity (think runout and you’ll be close) and balance are independent of each other. But the only way to reliably assess the uniformity is with a sophisticated balance machine like the Hunter RoadForce machines - very expensive and some tire shops do not have them.
So while minimizing the amount of weight might make one feel better, the assembly uniformity would be the equivalent of random.
I was wondering b/c if the belts produce a screw-type effect, reversing the tire on the rim might not work. Like if you take a piece of threaded rod, either end will insert into a nut by turning the rod in the clock-wise direction.