I had my 01 on the lift the other day and saw the insides of both my front tires are cupping pretty bad. I just had a 4 wheel alinement done about 6 months ago. a freind of mine did it at his shop and we used the z06 specs for the same year to aline. an reason other than not being able to rotate that they would cup like this? car on has a little over 14K on it

thanks

 

Nothing to do with rotation. Looks like your friend owes you some tires.

 

that was my 1st thought too but I watch him do the alinement.. it was on a hunter computer machine.. it basiclly tells you what to adjust and shows on the screen as you change things and gives you a green light when it was in spec. one of the tires are cupped before the alinement on the inside so we broke the tire down and moved to the other side so the inside was fresh on both of these.. maybe I'll have to get it to put it up again before I put the new rubber on

 

Any play/wear in your tie-rod ends etc? Toe-in checked? I ASSume that was part of your alignment? si/no?

Even worn bearings will cause cupping, especially inside cupping with a lot of hard cornering.

Strange that with good equipment, the alignment didn't correct the problem.

 

My friend had his car aligned ( an '02 C5) and put a on a new set of tires. He has 25,000 on the tires they still look decent.

 

yeah that is what I thought. plus the car is a garage queen with only 14K on it. I just noticed it yesterday. I have been seeing a lot of things I never saw before, I just put a lift in my garage a couple weeks ago and am getting new views of different things. was very cool for waxing and cleaning wheels yesterday.. my back is very happy.. lol

 

I'm going to need new rubber soon.. mostly due to wear on the rears.. that's why I want to find the problem with the fronts now. I've been told once a wear pattern starts on a tire it is done.. maybe they were always like this and I never noticed.. not sure

 

Are they cupping or is just the inside worn? Cupping is usually caused by underinflation, but if the inside of the tire is worn it was definitely a poor alignment.

 

i looks like about 3-4 inches of the tire is chopped up on the inside.. and this is on both the front tires.. not sure if it matters but the tires are stretched a bit.. I put new wheels on at the time we did all this stuff and I went with the Z06 widths and put the stock Runflats back on the new wheels.. maybe that is my problem?

 

I couldn't tell you the exact cause of the problem, but generally speaking, it sounds most like an incorrect alignment.

When I had my car aligned to Z06 specs, it took them about 2 hours and two drives down the street. They said the adjustments were really sensitive and when they adjusted one thing, it would throw something else out of whack.

 

i guess i'll have him put it on the rack and recheck it. I know what your talking about with the changes we did the rear 1st and then the front and basiclly had to bounce back and forth with little changes to balance everything out. what was funny is the rack monitors it whole time and see the changes as they happen.. but the machine tells you what to do..

 

Alignment is not the likely problem. Cupping is caused by the tire hitting the ground unevenly, like bounce from bad shocks or more likely wheel weights that have come off. Our wheels use stick on weights that with heat and age can come loose and fall off. Tire inflation will wear the tire evenly either inside or outter edges based on over or under inflation. Camber will wear either the inside or outside of the tire based on either positive or negative camber. Go easy on your friend he likely did a fine alignment for you.

 

Inside tire cupping has been a problem on both C5's that I've had. The 98 coupe did it and so does the 04.

 

hey 01 vert. when i bought my 02 z06 it had 12,000 mikes and i had to put front tires on it the first week i had it. It was a combination of the aggressive negative camber setting from the factory and the fact that it may have needed an alignment. i was shocked aswell when i noticed mine. Corvette tax i guess.

 

It is a problem with the factory settings. They are aggressive for handling. If you do more straight highway driving rather than cornering, then your inside front tires will wear.

This is an alignment chart posted before.

Front 97-02 C-5 Corvette Daily Driver / Advanced Street / Autocross Baseline / Track Baseline
Toe
1/32" in / 0" to 1/32" in / 1/16" in / 1/8"out-1/32" in
Camber
0° / 1/4° neg / 1/2° neg / 1/2° neg
Caster
6-7° pos 6-7° pos 4-6° pos 4-6° pos
Rear 97-02 C-5 Corvette Daily Driver / Advanced Street / Autocross Baseline / Track Baseline
Toe
1/16" in / 1/16" in / 1/16"-1/4" in / 1/8"- 1/4"in
Camber
0° / 1/2° neg / 1/4 - 2° neg / 3/4 - 2° neg

These wheel alignments are not factory standards. These are derived from tests, professional drivers and chassis engineers.
You should always consider driver, fuel and cargo weights when your Corvette is aligned. Please note that these specs are symmetrical. For example, when we recommend 1/8" toe in, that indicates 1/16" on each front wheel for a total of 1/8" total toe in.

Daily Driver - These specs are designed to minimize tire wear and dynamic forces on front end parts. Driver effort is minimum, the car will steer very "light" and may wander or be "darty" on road with wear ruts. If you are uncomfortable with this feeling, toe the car in up to a maximum of 1/8" total toe in.

Advanced Street - These specs are designed to give an even quicker steering response with minimum tire wear. If the car is "darty", toe the car in. By toeing in, you may loose some turn-in qualities gained by the initial specs.

Autocross - These specs are a good baseline to start from. The driver must take into consideration that size, compound and condition of the tires. The chassis is affected by the valve package in the shocks, spring rates and sway bars. The Autocross course design and the condition of the surface will also have a bearing. These specs do not work and are not recommended for street use because of adverse tire wear. The car will act "nervous" when ever changing street surface.

Track - These specs are by far just a baseline. Those of you who race know alignment specs will change based upon weather, track and unique setup. These specs can also change on each corner of the car and driver to driver.

 

thanks to everyone for the help. I can't wait to give my buddy the specs for aligning the car. he is going to look at me like I'm nuts.. But he will do it anyway because he is he man... just to try it out

 

All exellent info. I was an alignment tech for about 5 yrs. and agree with the above posts. I don't know what kind of driving you do, but unless you do alot of aggressive cornering I recommend staying away from the Z06 specs and using a more tire friendly conservative setup. The computer alignments can be very nice if they are calibrated regularly, however from experience I can tell you that they can be way off. Always best to double check manually. You can find some good info on how to do this by looking here

 

A cupping type of wear may be be the result of a damaged belt or poor wheel balance.

RonJ ...

 

Would these settings apply to a '04? Thanks