Front Camber adjustment
 

Our 2002 Protege 5 door bought used with 33K miles wore the inside off front replacement tires badly. They were shot in 15K miles.

The camber looks too negative in front for a street car.Took it in for an alignment. Toe was only slightly negative in front but still negative, at least on the rack. Camber was -1.1 degrees and -1.0 degree in front. [EDIT: Ooops! I misread the factory spec. It's -48' or about -0.8 degree, so I guess the camber is not far off spec after all.]

I looked atthe shop manual and see the adjustment procedure, rotating thestrut tops. Each 1/4 turnlooks to be1/2 degree, but the notation is confusing to me.Two positions are indicated as +30'and one as 0. I've seen comments elsewhere that shifting the indicator dot position to the front inside, one of the +30' positions, increases negative camber. Nice for the track, but not for a family car.

Before I fuss with it, does anyone know which way to adjust the front struts to make the camber more positive?

As the total front toe was only -.07 degrees Iwill add a little more negative to that as the spec is -0.20 degrees (-12').

The shop recommended tire rotation. That's nice, but the rear camber is not a heck of a lot better at -0.8 and -0.7 degrees (spec is about -0.5 degree) with no adjustability. No matter how you rotate the tires, unless you dismount them and swap wheels, the inside is always going to be the same edge.

I can't find anybody else complaining about this problem. Maybe I just need to get the toe closer the the correct spec even though it is within the "acceptable" range. I'd like to do the same with the camber, even though I see a lot of comments elsewhere that tire wear is not much of an issue with camber until 2-3 degrees negative.

Interestingly, the rear tires are toed out 0.24 degrees. The spec is the same as the front, toed in 0.20 degrees. Better check the rear tires over!

TIA,

Bill