I do not believe the rear camber is adjustable but suspect the front may well be.

I have been looking at the suspension section of my old Haynes Manual for my previous 1998 Mazda 626. This had Macpherson struts and states the front camber could be adjusted slightly by quote: "altering the position of the upper strut mount in the strut tower". Looking at the strut mountings on my Mazda 5 from inside the engine compartment there is a small spigot located in an oval slot. I suspect this may be the range of adjustment. On my car the spigots have a spot of blue paint. Looking from the front the spigot is located at about 2 oclock on the offside and 10 oclock on the nearside. In my case the nearside spigot is towards the inboard end of the slot which would suggest being towards the maximum negative camber range. The offside spigot is more towards the centre of the slot.

I will discuss this with the garage when I visit on the 27th.

I would be interested if others could check the position of their spigots in the slot and report back. I would be interested in hearing from both those experiencing problems and those whose tyres are fine. If I am right people experiencing outside edge wear should find the spigot towards the outside of the car while those experiencing inner edge wear,like me, should find the pigot towards the inside of the engine compartment. Those whose tyres are fine should find the spigot in the centre.

Of course I could be totally wrong but the theory sounds good to me. Feel free to add your comments.

I will add this to and put future posts on the 2008 Mazda 5 Tyres thread as it would seem more appropriate.


2008 Mazda 5 2.0D Sport

 

I do not believe the rear camber is adjustable but suspect the front may well be.

I have been looking at the suspension section of my old Haynes Manual for my previous 1998 Mazda 626. This had Macpherson struts and states the front camber could be adjusted slightly by quote: "altering the position of the upper strut mount in the strut tower". Looking at the strut mountings on my Mazda 5 from inside the engine compartment there is a small spigot located in an oval slot. I suspect this may be the range of adjustment. On my car the spigots have a spot of blue paint. Looking from the front the spigot is located at about 2 oclock on the offside and 10 oclock on the nearside. In my case the nearside spigot is towards the inboard end of the slot which would suggest being towards the maximum negative camber range. The offside spigot is more towards the centre of the slot.

I will discuss this with the garage when I visit on the 27th.

I would be interested if others could check the position of their spigots in the slot and report back. I would be interested in hearing from both those experiencing problems and those whose tyres are fine. If I am right people experiencing outside edge wear should find the spigot towards the outside of the car while those experiencing inner edge wear,like me, should find the pigot towards the inside of the engine compartment. Those whose tyres are fine should find the spigot in the centre.

Of course I could be totally wrong but the theory sounds good to me. Feel free to add your comments.

This was originally posted on the old tyre thread but I will now continue using only this thread as it is more appropriate.


2008 Mazda 5 2.0D Sport

 

Rhodri... Some good observations there. To adjust toe (though at the rear it is not really Toe because if it needs adjusting it is because of component wear or 'crash damage' and actually need replacement components) and camber at the rear (see doc I will add in time, seriously edited to fit here) which is adjusted via a cam bolt you can see with graduations on if you look underneath the rear of your Mazda 5. My spigots are in the same positions as your diesel on top of front strut/shockers and is painted blue too, I have the petrol car. But beware that there are different values for petrol and diesel versions of the UK Sport (let alone major differences to USA/Canadian version etc.). I'd like to suggest that we keep this thread for the 2 UK Sport versions please?
Good news for me I got, 4 new tyres fitted tonight by Kwik-Fit authorised by the leasing company (not Mazda). Even though I was there when the man ordered '...Dunlop 2050's....'. I found out when at home to look at that I got Dunlop SP SPORT MAXX TT. http://www.sportmaxxtt.com/en/sport-maxx-tt .These look good and are asymmetric (the pattern on the inside may be different to outside, for example the circumference groves are 7, 10, 12 and 12mm wide, see photo below). I will monitor, but not rotate as I want to see how long they last. Already the ride home felt higher. So these have been fitted at 17250 miles (9 month old car). I was so excited about the new tyres that I forgot to come away with one old one to send to BTMA for report. I will recover it at the next opportunity. Pictures of new tread pattern below.

Look at this fantastic short video/animation about tyre wear via the British Tyre Manufacturers' Association (BTMA) http://www.tyresafe.org/video/videow03.html
It is so clear from our symptoms on this issue that our front tyre wear problem is negative CAMBER, for the reasons I have suggested about 17" on a 15" wheel design.
By the way if you are stopped by police and the wear (down to 'canvas' on the inside edge in our case) on your tyres is spotted or you have an accident that involves police or insurance and they wish to pursue the matter you will find your insurance invalidated, a £2500 fine and 3 points for each tyre found with 'fault'. Bare that in mind when writing to Mazda to complain about the risk they are taking with your lives in their cars with this front tyre wear issue.

 

Haven't posted for a while, my problems were like all of the others here and didn't go away. Experimented with tyres and pressures and found some success by accident when buying cheap tyres after throwing good money after bad. Put on some Maxxis Victra tyres (£70 each) at 35 psi, and after 6000 or so miles they were wearing evenly, held well enough, and were comparatively quiet (though I always thought the car a little noisey).
I have now got rid of the car as the other spectre of rising oil levels and blocked DPFs became intolerable and expensive. Miss the performance as I now have a more relaxed VW Passat Estate 1.9 (non DPF), but don't miss the worry of what I will have to shell out for next. It was my first and last Mazda, customer service and running costs have put me off for good.
Hope someone finds a fix, I know how frustrating the whole thing can be.

Dave

 

Ditto the above

Pathfinder now on the way.

Mazda really should have sorted this out 2 years ago as its spoilt a very good car & now with places like this people share a LOT of info.......

 

Look at this fantastic short video/animation about tyre wear from the British Tyre Manufacturers' Association (BTMA) http://www.tyresafe.org/video/videow03.html
It is so clear from our symptoms on this issue that our front tyre wear problem is negative CAMBER, for the reasons I have suggested about 17" on a 15" wheel design.

 

Thanks for your input.
I had a look at your little video link - very good. Further info on the principles of wheel alignment which I found useful can be found at www.familycar.com/alignment.htm

Thanks also for the info on rear adjustment. My last car needed that but having it done for the first time at about 130,000 miles it was hardly unexpected.

I agree with you about it being a camber issue. To try and get some idea of how my camber was set on my car I put a thin coat of grease on sheets of paper and then slowly ran my car over them to see the tread pattern. I compared rear and front in both full lock positions as well as straight ahead. Hardly a scientific way of doing it I know but it did appear on balance that the greater tread pattern was on the outside i.e. opposite the where the wear is taking place. This would suggest my camber setting is slightly positive. Against this is the fact that the area where the tyre is worn will not create a tread pattern at the near static test speed. So on balance I decided the result could not be considered conclusive.
I also repeated the test comparing tyres with pressures at 38psi compared with 33psi. Again nothing conclusive was evident.
Another thing I tried - I increased the front tyres pressure to 38psi. I put a test patch of white paint on the worn area to see how quickly it was being wornaway.
After about 5miles all traces of paint had disappeared from the worn area. Again not very scientific but it would suggest that simply increasing tyre pressures will do little to solve the problem.

I have also been giving some thought to the issue of settings for 16" v 17" wheels. I would have assumed the overall diameter of wheel and tyre should be near enough the same in both cases. Is this right? I am not quite sure how the 50 v 55 aspect ratio of the different tyres translates into mm or inches on the overall diameter. Can anyone give me a figure? If the overall difference is only a few mm then it may be the settings will be the same in both cases. I suppose the designers are more interested in the wheel/tyre radius rather than diameter as it will be this distance that goes into their calculations. Any differences in overall diameter between 16 and 17 wheel/tyre combinations would therefore be halved as far as the designer is concerned. Add in the fact that a worn tyre will have a radius of about 5mm less than a new one and a further degree of variation is introduced.

Does all this make sense? It does not allow for any design factors arising due to the same cornering thrust being applied to tyres with 50 v 55 aspect ratios. So far my brain has not been able to come up with any theories on this.

2008 Mazda 5 2.0D Sport

 

It's funny that you have tried 2 things I did too, the driving car over paper and the marking of the wear area (I used the tyre crayon). A good place to get the differences in tyre size is http://www.kouki.co.uk/utilities/vis...ize-calculator . Remember that the base Mazda 5 had 15" steel wheels, our Sport versions have larger brake discs (compared to the 15" and 16" models) and 17" wheels, but Mazda should have changed too the swing arm and the suspension strut (and the sundries too, like drive shaft length, steering rack ends etc. etc.). The new Dunlop maxx TT feel great so far, I will update you all on performance in due course.

 

Some good info on this thread now so I guess its time for me to post some of my thoughts/info. Glad to see there are others as bothered about this situation as I am.

Mazda UK are currently investigating my situation.

At their recommendation I paid for a 4 wheel alignment at a place the mazda dealer uses.

I will attach some pics of the strut tops and "markings" for toe on the rear shortly which correspond to the measurements below.

The dealers recommended settings are: 1mm toe in each side at the front, 1.5mm toe in each side at the rear. No reference to camber.

This is what my car is now set to. Interstingly the rear markers point in the same direction even though both wheels are toe in. I would have thought they were handed.

The camber was measured not adjusted at the following values (sorry for the mixed units but this is what the printout says):

NSF -1 degree .4
OSF -0 degree .4
NSR -1 degree .6
OSR -1 degree .3

Please feel free to comment.

No some general observations:

1. Dunlop say the tyres havent been changed. However when our car was nearly new (500 miles) we got a puncture & replaced a rear with a dunlop 2050 to match. Its only an opinion but the wear on this 2050 seem noticeably less that the other rear one even though its only done 500 miles less.

2. Ford Focus cmax (same floorpan) are known for being hard on front tyres (search the web)

3. I dug out the settings when I had my impreza wrx aligned and the camber values are very similar to the 5 (bit less toe in) and despite being a performance car with soft bridgstones on it the tyres wear evenly across the tread and I got 18000 miles out of a set. So is the wear on the 5 just down to -ve camber ??? For info the place that did this is a place called Powerstation in Tewksbury and this is easily the best alignment kit I have ever seen. Would have taken the 5 there but mazda wanted me to go where the dealer uses.

If I think of any more I will add it later. Here are the pics.

 

I will try and attach photos of my front struts so people can compare their settings with them.

2008 Mazda 5 2.0D