[Camry452]

I drive an older Camry but it is a good car and I am the type of guy who likes to tinker with things and I am trying to optimize the tire pressure on my Camry and also set the front/rear mix and I want to ask for opinions and suggestions. First the important details:

2001 Toyota Camry CE 5S-FE engine, A140E Transmission.
Stock 205/65R15 tires mounted on Toyota steel wheels.
Factory stock stabilizer bars front and rear.

I want to minimize the understeer and maybe try to introduce a bit of oversteer into the handling although I realize that probably is not going to happen. I am currently running the front tires at 33 PSI and the rears at 30 PSI. I like to push the car at on ramps especially the S-Curve type on ramps. My personal best is 48 MPH at one of the on ramps in my neighborhood that leads onto the Interstate. Any suggestions or comments will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[diesel-man]

As an experiment, pump your tires up to the amount that I have, and take a test run on comparable conditions....Sunny, temperature, tires heated up etc. and see what happens. Then let's hear the results...on that, before monkeying with alignment.
If you adjust the alignment yourself, clean the tie rods and put a stripe of paint on them --- ---- --- and record your changes....in case that you want to return to your original settings.

I run 43lbs air in the front, 35 lbs in the rear 215/55R17 94V 2016 Avalon Hybrid....rear toe as close to 0 as possible. All alignment specs have a range that is acceptable. Read up on alignment to see how it affects handling concerning understeer/oversteer. Here is a page that I saved, also read page 1. I would have to look for another page that has more cause/effect of alignment settings.
Sidewall stiffness also affects tire "roll" (on turns) V H T (stiffest first, less, less) When I buy tires next I am going to H tires from V

Weird tire wear

A long time ago, my daughter bought a used 1999 Accord with Bridgestone tires on it. LF shows wear on the inside, so I rotate and the inside wear on that tire continues. At least one of those tires wore down to the belts before I replaced them. Didn't care much about using those tires up...

www.bobistheoilguy.com

The company I worked for supplied a car model that was built in 2 different plants. The one plant had lots of irregular wear complaints and the other didn't. The plants each credited (blamed) the tire brand (each plant had a different tire brand) - but the design team in Detroit wasn't so sure because the plants had different alignment statistics (how close to spec did they got the alignment.)

The tire companies said the problem was alignment, and that the wear would be aggravated by consumers not using enough inflation pressure.

So the vehicle manufacturer conducted a test. They tested 2 levels of each of these 4 parameters: Camber, Inflation pressure, toe, and tire brand. They conducted the test on a pulley wheel especially designed to test tire wear.

The largest contributor? Toe! Followed by inflation pressure, followed by the interaction of toe and inflation pressure, followed by camber, etc. The least significance was tire brand.

So I'm sticking with the cause being camber with excessive amounts of toe, where the toe was adjusted when you the vehicle was aligned.

 

[steve108]

Disconnect the front sway bar